VOORHEES, NJ-The Philadelphia-based Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust has completed deals involving two land parcels within its Echelon Mall property, one a ground lease, the other a sale. The lessor/buyer of the parcels is a joint venture of the Wayne, PA-based Dewey Cos. and Philadelphia-based Grosvenor Investment Management. The latter, the former Legg Mason Real Estate Services, provided $14.5 million in equity. Further terms were not released.
The deals are part of PREIT's $150-million redevelopment of the Echelon Mall property as the renamed, mixed-use Voorhees Town Center. In particular, Dewey's involvement in the project is tied to the addition of a residential component to the site. Dewey Commercial will spend $90 million to develop a total of 425 residential units, including 108 condos on the six-acre purchased parcel and 317 rental apartments on the 19-acre leased parcel.
"With these transactions, we're marking the beginning of Voorhees Town Center as a project that is blending residential and retail to serve the community in a new and exciting way," says Joseph Coradino, president of PREIT Services LLC. "We're pleased to have Dewey as our residential partner, with their reputation in multifamily residential development. We're also very pleased to continue to serve Echelon Mall's shopper base through reinventing the mall and adding new retail formats."
As reported by GlobeSt.com, PREIT is renovating, repositioning and downsizing the 35-year-old, 1.2-million-sf enclosed Echelon Mall, originally developed by the Rouse Co. The enclosed portion of the retail component will retain Macy's (224,000 sf) and Boscov's (173,000 sf) as anchors, along with 250,000 sf of specialty shops. A former Sears department store will be subtracted from the property, but a 65,000-sf supermarket to be named later will be added, along with 130,000 sf of lifestyle retail.
A centerpiece of the new Voorhees Town Center will be a new landscaped boulevard, along which the lifestyle retail will be arrayed. New public spaces will also be created. Actual work on the retail portion is slated to start next month with demolition of the former Sears building. The mall renovation is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year and the grand opening for the town center, including the residential component, is slated for the summer of 2008.
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