Sports cars were racing through the inside of Charlestowne Mall in St. Charles recently, and local officials were perfectly fine with that.
The mostly vacant mall found a new use earlier this year when a production company working for Toyota shot a commercial there featuring a new high-performance car.
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In the past two weeks, YouTube viewers have been able to watch the four-minute video to promote the upcoming Toyota Gazoo Racing GR 86 sports car.
The video includes cars spinning in snow and performing parking maneuvers outside the mall, as well as scenes where stunt drivers dart around pillars inside the shopping center and launch cars into the air.
The video was written, filmed and produced by Sweatpants Media of Long Beach, California. The search to find a mall to shoot inside, officials said, “took three or four months and there was a lot of back and forth.”
“It was probably six months all in from when we started searching to when we locked in on St. Charles,” said producer and head of production Elliott Perrigo, who added that his company has worked with Toyota since the media company started 10 years ago.
Perrigo said one of the goals of the commercial was to have “racing cars in a mall that would be a movie-like experience.”
“We searched the whole country for a mall that was in good enough shape and also would let us drive in it, so that’s how we wound up there,” he said.
He said for the production team “getting drift cars inside a mall was something we thought would be very cool – like a movie.”
Cost of the production, Perrigo said, was more than $600,000.
Joseph Meneghini, property manager for Krausz Co. which owns Charlestowne Mall, said talks with Sweatpants Media began in October “when they started coming out to the mall to take pictures and measure.”
“The production crew worked about a week, with filming done around Jan. 25th or 26th,” said Meneghini. “There was snow on the ground and there was filming one day outside and one day inside. It was amazing to watch. They had the number one and number two drift racing champions in the world flown out. One is Norwegian, the other is Japanese – very controlled with the car going straight and the back end out sideways – it was amazing.”
The Toyota commercial isn’t the first time the mall has been showcased. It was also used in the summer of 2021 for an Amazon Prime film shoot, Meneghini said.
“It was nothing like with the high-intensity driving but it was actually filmed in the mall and on the streets of St. Charles,” he said. “As far as the commercial, they really dressed the building up well and their cinematographers really did a great job getting the property ready. It was an interesting and unique thing to use the property for and I hope to be able to do this in the future as well. We’re working with our leasing people about getting the mall registered as a filming location.”
St. Charles City Administrator Heather McGuire said the commercial put St. Charles once again in the limelight after the recent film shoot for the Netflix movie “The Killer” earlier this month in the city’s downtown.
“We don’t own the mall so there was no involvement with the city as far as the permitting or anything,” McGuire said. “We kind of saw the video when everybody else did. Anytime we can get the city of St. Charles in the press or in the movies or film industry or TV, it’s a great thing, it’s a positive thing for the community. We’ve got a lot to offer.
“The mall is not being used right now and it’s bringing attention to the city that you always want,” she said. “When our mayor (Lora Vitek) heard about it, she thought it was really cool just to see it and brought a little nostalgia for what the old Charlestowne Mall was. I liken it to the ‘Blues Brothers’ when they filmed that movie in a mall – just the ‘once was’ and seeing it and what it meant to the community.”
Vitek said she knows the empty mall has created some image problems for the city but is still happy for the publicity from the commercial.
“The mall is kind of a sore spot and we continue to work to develop it, but in the meantime, if we’re getting some good press and publicity in-between, I’ll take it. That’s not a bad thing to happen,” Vitek said.
Both McGuire and Meneghini hope that better days are ahead for the once-busy mall.
“The future of the mall – the plan is to continue with the eventual redevelopment of the property. It’s just a matter of continuing to locate the correct partners to do this with,” Meneghini said.
“We’re excited. We’re actually working with the owners of the property right now to secure a new contract on it in the next few months, so we’re excited for the potential. I do know they have some offers they are currently entertaining,” McGuire added. “We’re doing whatever we can to revitalize it and making it sort of that thriving hub that it once was.”
To watch the video, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NbAB–AGyQ&t=116s
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David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.