Steeplegate redevelopment stymied by mall owners, city leaders say – Concord Monitor

Eying the bare storefronts and empty parking spots at Steeplegate Mall, Concord’s city leaders hope to convince the owners to put the sprawling property to better use after years of decline. 

Mayor Jim Bouley set the 480,000-square-foot mall among the council’s priorities for the next two years alongside other “community-wide economic development initiatives” intended to bolster the city’s tax base, including a rewrite of the zoning code, encouraging private housing development and allowing food trucks. 

“It’s not a project per se, but it’s an opportunity that we need to start thinking about how to address it as a city,” Bouley said at the City Council’s biennial priority setting session on Monday. 

“Should we have some sort of plan to reach out to them? There are a lot of areas that could really be spruced up around that area, and are they adhering to the planning approval that was given to them years ago?” he said. 

The mall opened on the Heights in 1990 and started to see a steady exodus of retail businesses over the years, including anchor tenants Bon-Ton and Sears, and most recently Bath and Body Works. Fewer than 10 of the original businesses remain, and the property has fallen from the number one taxpayer in the city’s tax rolls in 2012 to below the top ten last year. 

Deputy City Manager Carlos Baía said the city administration has made multiple proposals to Steeplegate’s owners over the past four or five years, even offering to create a special zoning district just for the parcel, but without success. 

“They have not been open-minded. We have proposed residential, we have proposed mixed-use, we’ve proposed keeping the structure, we’ve proposed razing the structure,” Baía said. “Offers have been made, generous offers have been made to the mall from developers, and those offers have been rejected out of hand.”

Ward 3 City Councilor Jennifer Kretovic said that the mall’s vast parking lots were mostly empty, wasting space that could be covered with temperature-cooling trees.

“It does fall back to ‘are they being good stewards of the city and following the plans that we laid out for the building of the mall?’” Kretovic said. “Even though they purchased that mall, they have an obligation to the city to maintain it.”

Steeplegate has faced the same financial challenges as other malls around the country as online shopping grew more popular. 

In 2016, Namdar Realty Group brought the mall for $10.3 million from Rouse Properties, which defaulted on a $47 million loan payment and returned the property to the bank. Representatives from Namdar could not be reached for an interview Tuesday. 

Namdar specializes in buying struggling commercial properties and has faced lawsuits from communities that claim the company has allowed its malls to fall apart. 

“I know that the administration has reached out. I know individuals that have reached out. I’ve tried, and there are people who have actually been interested in purchasing it, as I understand. But every time this happens the price goes up further and further up,” Baía said. 

According to Baía, the mall’s owners have expressed openness to one plan in the past: carving the property into smaller pieces to be sold off one at a time. Baía said that splitting the parcel that way and that dealing with multiple owners instead of just one would “run contrary to the community’s interests.”

Councilors discussed transforming the old retail spaces at the mall into senior housing or mixed-use development. What makes Steeplegate different from other failing malls is that the surrounding Heights businesses have remained successful, maintaining low vacancy rates along that commercial corridor.

At-Large Councilor Byron Champlin said that as the number of available properties for development shrinks, the city should develop an intentional strategy for where to encourage either new residential or commercial development. “There should be some sort of overarching role of the city to help shape that development so we have balanced development,” Champlin said.

At-Large City Councilor Keach had the last word in the discussion of the mall on Monday. Keach guessed that the mall served as an advantageous loss on the company’s balance sheets. “I don’t think any city dollars should go in that direction at all,” he said.