NORWALK, Conn. – The mixed use aspect of a mall that would go on the 95/7 property was pitched Monday to South Norwalk residents at a District B Democratic Town Committee meeting, where General Growth Properties (GGP) representatives answered questions about that ranged from jobs to property values and took suggestions to heart.
No, there would be no housing and no office space on the long-vacant site at the intersection of I-95 and West Avenue, but when you look at the district as a whole, the mixed use element is there, said state Rep. Larry Cafero (R-142), GGP’s attorney.
“The real issue is what is there now? Nothing. What has been there for 20 years? Nothing,” Cafero said in response to a question from Diane Lauricalla. “This is a project, unlike anyone else that is being developed right now, this is a project that if they apply during calendar year 2014 they can get approvals in 2015 — 24 months from that approval you could be cutting a ribbon and walking into a retail center. That hasn’t happened in two decades.”
Lauricella asked if GGP could meet the public halfway and put a Whole Foods or a Trader Joe’s on the property, as the public had expressed a desire for mixed use. She stressed that people could contact their council members to express opinions if they didn’t like what GGP is planning.
The presentation by Doug Adams of GGP had stressed that West Avenue has a large dead spot between the retail of SoNo and the area north of the Route 7 interchange. Putting a hustling, bustling mall with pedestrian plazas and storefronts would connect the areas, he said.
Clay Fowler of Spinnaker Real Estate Partners LLC, the former owner of the property, said the original mixed use plan of the area called for more retail in Waypointe, further up West Avenue, than has developed. If Head of the Harbor is built on Wall Street it will have less retail than expected. “Retail square footage total does not vary a lot from what would have been if both of those districts had been developed as originally planned,” he said.
“You can’t get more diverse than it currently is,” Cafero said. In fact, the developers who have poured money into housing would not appreciate the competition, he said. And while Fowler got approval for office space on the property, there is no market for office space now, he said, as 27 percent of what is available locally is vacant.
Lauricella was echoing a recent comment from Mayor Harry Rilling, who said he had seen a mixed-use Whole Foods while on tour in Dallas with the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Adams told Lauricella he was open to talking about a Whole Foods or an incubator for the site.
The project would include job training for locals, Adams said. Cafero said there’s a practical reason for that: Given the traffic in the area, it is obviously preferable that the jobs go to people who don’t need to go far because it’s less likely they’ll be late to work. Job training for locals doesn’t come out of the kindness of GGP’s heart; it’s a promise to its tenants, Cafero said.
NAACP President Darnell Crosland asked if the expansive roof shown in the concept drawing of the mall might include some greenery, and maybe a place for people to have a drink or enjoy tapas.
Adams indicated openness to the idea.
“Those are things we can do because it’s not the roof of a private building,” Adams said. “It’s by nature a public building, which is why we hire a security company. They’re not police, but they help manage the building and work with the police because it’s open to the public pretty much from early morning until late at night.”
Crosland also wanted to know if there was an estimated number of years for the mall to make a profit, and if it was possible the mall would be built and then become vacant.
Adams said there is no hard and fast rule.
“It’s about getting it up and what we’ll call stabilized, where it has a certain cash flow that comes out of it,” Adams said. “That’s part of the reason when you see a lot of these types of property owned by companies like ours, because they require substantial investment and staying power which a public company like ours has so that we will continue to work on the property, tweak it, every year, every five years, every eight years, to make sure it stays current.”
Ernie Dumas asked what the mall might do to property values.
Cafero said he is not an expert. “I’m a citizen of Norwalk and I’ve got to tell you that, in my opinion, this piece of property that has been vacant for 20 years, that has separated and ripped apart these two areas of the city, once joined together is going to increase the value of all properties, in my humble opinion. That’s just opinion, but that has been my experience,” he said.
“Would you be willing to basically maybe reserve two or three storefronts for people in the community so maybe there would be like a contest?” Councilwoman Phaedrel “Faye” Bowman (D-District B) asked.
Adams said it’s a good idea that GGP has been hearing.
“We have in other areas also looked at programs, whether it’s incubators or systems to help with management for people that create businesses, to be entrepreneurship. So as part of, maybe an adjunct to the job training, maybe there is a program or entrepreneur training,” Adams said.
Bowman also asked if GGP could build housing elsewhere, as the current Land Disposition Agreement for the property includes housing.
“We’re not housing developers,” Adams said. “What we see as our place in this district is – I understand there was an approval for housing, we need the entire site to make the program work – is that our main role is to provide a lot of job opportunity and a large tax impact without a lot of services required relative to that impact. We help the housing that is already happening and more housing can occur along the corridor from other developers.”
“I’ll do some housing,” Fowler said.
Councilman Travis Simms (D-District B) asked about pedestrian safety if the mall is built.
“The traffic is a prime consideration,” Adams said. “Often with office developments you’ve got to get to your job, but ours is often a choice, so we are very concerned about traffic. We’re going to work very hard to make sure the traffic works and works correctly.”
Cafero used an analogy to illustrate that the mall would not be a fortress such as the malls in Stamford and Trumbull.
“If you think about a mug of coffee and you think about a glass of water,” Cafero said. “The mug of coffee and the glass of water might contain the same amount of liquid but they’re very different because the liquid on the inside of a mug of coffee cannot see out nor could anyone see in. It is an island unto itself. Everything that goes on in that mug of coffee goes on in that mug of coffee. A glass of water is a different animal. A glass of water is clear, it is clean, it looks outward and allows people to look inward. It takes in the community that is around it and that is the concept behind this mall.”
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