NORWALK, Conn. – An application to build a mall in South Norwalk will be submitted by the end of the week, Doug Adams of GGP (General Growth Properties) said Monday.
This comes as Councilman Bruce Kimmel (D-At Large) pushes to have a poll taken of the city officials responsible for the decision to see if they are open to the idea at all before much time is spent. Other community members continue to debate the idea, with the NoN commenter “Suzanne” offering research into GGP’s willingness to pay property taxes and a Central Norwalk commercial real estate businessman predicting that a mall would bring prosperity to the Wall Street area.
Adams declined to offer details on the proposal. At last month’s joint meeting of the Common Council Planning Committee and the Norwalk Redevelopment Agency, Adams and other GGP reps said it would include a 150-room boutique hotel and classroom space for Norwalk Community College (NCC).
The mall would be on the long vacant 95/7 site, at the intersection of West Avenue and Interstate 95. GGP must convince the RDA and the Common Council to change the specifications for the Land Disposition Agreement (LDA) for the site, which is part of the Reed Putnam Urban Renewal Plan.
The LDA currently includes office space, but there’s no market for that, according to Attorney William Hennessey, representing GGP. There’s .75 million square feet of vacant office space in Norwalk now, Hennessey said at last month’s meeting. New space would be more expensive because of the construction costs and building it would impose a hardship on the developers who own office space in Norwalk now, he said. Office space in Stamford is also largely vacant, he said. Even if you take out the BLT building, there are 3,000 units, he said.
The LDA also calls for residential space. Hennessey pointed out that there are 2,000 housing units that are either new or can reasonably expect to be built in Norwalk in the next two years, Hennessey said. Stamford has twice that and the residential market is becoming saturated, he said.
It’s a different story with retail, he said. Demand for the high end type of retail that GGP would offer exceeds supply, he said.
“The demographic here on a macro level, the state of Connecticut is terrific, the highest income levels in the country,” Hennessey said. “On a micro level this area of lower Fairfield County there just the best you can get. There are few places in the United States that have this kind of this number demographic, and that equals demand of course.”
The RDA commissioned a study on the feasibility of a hotel to be built with the expected mall proposal. Pinnacle Advisory Group said the analysis is generally positive, but expressed “general caution” about having two hotels in SoNo, a reference to the request by TR SoNo Partners to modify an approved plan for a hotel next to the Norwalk Police headquarters parking lot to make it an extended stay hotel.
Excerpts from Study of ggp hotel feasibility – Dec 5, 2014, 4-10 PM
Naysayers include members of the Coalition of Norwalk Neighborhood Associations.
Third Taxing District Commissioner Deb Goldstein said at a recent CNNA meeting that it is frustrating to see people look at GGP with a defeatist attitude of taking whatever developers suggest. The city has a new economic development director and a Zoning Task Force, she said. The Plan of Conservation and Development should be adhered to, she said. “Instead we are talking about rewriting an LDA that has been in existence for what, 10 years?” she said.
“There is this perception of inevitability,” Maria Bryant said. “There is also that mindset that Norwalk has of being kind of a loser. ‘If we don’t get this we’re not going to get anything.’ It’s desperation.”
“They won’t even show us the demographics,” Diane Cece said. “We have asked for the demographics so we can see what the draw is going to be, because it’s going to be from outside the Norwalk community. So the traffic is going to be a nightmare and people don’t – you don’t go to the mall and then go to South Norwalk to eat. It just doesn’t happen that way. It’s a destination.”
Cece said CNNA had asked for a tax analysis, comparing what would come in with a mall to what would come in if something that conforms to the LDA was built. GGP hasn’t delivered it.
Planning Committee Chairman Doug Hempstead (R-At Large) said at last week’s committee meeting that GGP has not provided the information requested of it at the joint meeting. But he said he planned to meet with RDA Chairman Felix Serrano to work out a schedule to expedite the approval process for GGP.
Kimmel said there needs to be a timeline for the joint groups to decide whether they approve of the general concept before investing a lot of time scrutinizing the details.
“There is the hypothetical possibility where we say no we don’t like the concept,” Kimmel said. “We can’t go on and on and on without knowing whether we back the concept or not.”
The tax issue is a problem for NoN commenter Suzanne, who recently posted a link to a 2007 study, done by Good Jobs First at the request of Service Employees International Union (SEIU), that says that GGP has a pattern of challenging property assessments.
“Over the past decade or so, GGP filed assessment appeals at 27 of the malls in our sample, or 54 percent. At many of these, there were multiple appeals or appeals covering multiple years, resulting in a total of 73 assessment challenges,” the study says.
Adams responded to that in a Monday email:
“General Growth Properties pays its taxes on all of its properties – including the 95/7 site in Norwalk – on time.
“After the completion of construction of the development as proposed, Norwalk can count on General Growth Properties paying millions of dollars in taxes to the city. HR&A Advisors, Inc. a third party consulting firm engaged by GGP, estimates initial real estate and personal property taxes of $4.7 million. This does not include any tax revenues that would be generated by a hotel, recently proposed as an additional component of the 95/7 development.
“In some cases, where appropriate, General Growth Properties avails itself of tax appeals processes – as is the right of any taxpayer – to ensure that the taxes paid by the company are fair.”
Michael McGuire of Austin-McGuire, a commercial real estate company, said recently he had reached out to a Barnes and Noble representative to try to interested the company in coming to Wall Street, to no avail.
The rest of the story:
“I later spoke to him about the concept of attracting 2 to 4 major regional or national retail tenants together to Downtown Norwalk since there is roughly 120,000 square feet of available retail space here. That intrigued him, particularly now the GGP’s mall concept looks like it’s coming together. I should be meeting with him before the holidays.
“Downtown Norwalk is on the brink of great change and revitalization now that the mall is a possibility by creating interest from a much larger pool of retailers. All properties in the Washington Street to Wall Street corridor benefit. The closer we get to making the mall a reality, the greater the interest from anchor type retailers for the downtown. Once the anchors are in the smaller spaces fill up fast.
“The City will need to do its part by instituting a host of small but important changes to help foster this revitalization. Chief among these will be a blight ordinance/eminent domain and modest street/parking improvements and policy changes.”
While NCC is interested in having classes in the mall, McGuire has another suggestion.
“What would be a great move in revitalizing downtown Norwalk is to have NCC, or some other higher education institution, create a downtown classroom building in the office portion of the six-story Riverview Plaza building,” McGuire said. “That would be a great win for NCC and Norwalk. Its downtown location by a bus stop makes it very accessible and with the library nearby it just makes sense for NCC’s expansion on so many levels. Since the office market is weak this type of use is ideal.”
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