I don't know - at the time it was pretty clear where retail was heading and malls were not it. And even if opposition was based on business being "stolen" from main street, it is not a bad position for a city to push back on development outside of town while adjacent parts of the core city need significant help and development. The people that were for the mall weren't realistic - they were basically taking the approach that North Grand Mall wasn't doing well because it sucked, not because it was a dying model (which most people knew at the time). But I'd still consider this more of a broken clock being right twice a day than the city being good at planning.
Anyway, this is kind of a derailment, because it sounds like i'm trying to defend the anti-growth faction of the city, which I am not. I can understand Pollard's frustration, as there are some real pain in the ass people in the community that probably make his job difficult.