The $11 billion agreement to merge department-store chains Federated and May Co. is sparking plenty of speculation over what may become of some shopping malls —and in Tucson, most eyes are focusing on the future of El Con and Tucson Mall.

Last week's announcement stressed that no specific decisions have been made regarding the stores, other than to try to exploit Federated's Macy's brand as much as possible. Most likely the Robinsons-May name will give way to Macy's, but there won't be any name changes until at least next year.

There is an obvious conflict at Tucson Mall where both stores are among the five anchors that also include Dillard's, J.C. Penney and Sears. In other markets where similar conflicts exist, there has been the suggestion that Federated might want to change one of the two stores into a more upscale Bloomingdale's.

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Spokespeople at General Growth Properties, which owns both Tucson Mall and Park Place, didn't want to go on record speculating as to what might happen locally.

On the other hand, the Federated-May merger could make for an even more uncertain future for El Con Center where Robinsons-May has a large three-story store that dates back to 1960. It is so large, in fact, that it has a furniture department and still doesn't even use all of its retail space.

El Con has slowly been undergoing a transformation in recent years. A large space, originally built as a Goldwater's department store, still stands vacant as do several retail spaces within the mall. J.C. Penney is the only other department store still in the center.

Much of the east side of the original mall has been torn down and replaced with new Target and Home Depot stores. The north side of the mall houses a 20-screen Century movie theater.

Local real estate people, who spoke off the record, said they don't expect much to happen to the Macy's store at Park Place. That recently-renovated center has a strong customer-base with no May Co. outlet there.

Ed Backlund, a Phoenix consultant who has returned to his Phoenix-area home last week from St. Louis where he had been meeting with May Co. officials, insisted the deal is still in the early stages of being worked out, and there are many hurdles before there can be any discussion of what might happen to specific stores.

Indeed, there have been published reports that the May Co. still has concerns about maintaining a presence in its hometown of St. Louis.

David Hatfield may be reached at (520) 295-4237 or at dhatfield@azbiz.com.