The mall era is supposed to be over. Rather than build massive enclosed shopping centers amid a sea of parking lots, developers across the region have looked increasingly toward walkable mixed-use districts, with homes, businesses and shopping on top of one another.
To some extent, the numbers bear this out. From 2000 to 2009, an average of about 18.2 million square feet of mall space came online nationally, according to CoStar Group. Last year, it was down to 3.4 million.
In the midst of those trends, Trumbull in recent years has completed more than $35 million in renovations to the Westfield Trumbull mall, with successful businesses like the Apple store and Cheesecake Factory continuing to count on the shopping center’s success.
Even more dramatically, Norwalk will soon see construction of a 700,000-plus-square-foot enclosed shopping center on one of its most highly visible tracts. While malls elsewhere may be dying, Norwalk is staking much of its future growth on one.
And despite troubles elsewhere in the sector, there are indications this project, with its choice anchor stores, favorable demographics and desirable location, is on solid footing.
“There’s a broad perception that malls are dying, and that is the case in some places,” said Ryan McCullough, senior real estate economist with CoStar Group. “But the productivity is quite good on about 80 percent of malls, and the leasing is solid on many new properties.”
The malls with the best outlook have attributes that will be found in bulk at The SoNo Collection, as the mall planned by General Growth Properties (NYSE: GGP) will be known.
“The most important factor, beyond location, is who your tenants are,” McCullough said. “Who the tenants are can go a long way in predicting how a mall is going to do. The second factor beyond that is demographics.”
According to GGP, Norwalk is in the middle of one of the most desirable markets in the country, and “1 out of 5 households in the trade area are among the top 1 percent of Americans in terms of wealth.” CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
$40 million New London housing project to go to residents on Wednesday
New London — Tenants of a troubled high-rise apartment complex off Crystal Avenue next week are expected to get their first glimpse of conceptual plans of what may someday be their new homes.
In what came as a surprise move to some, the Massachusetts-based nonprofit Affordable Housing and Service Collaborative Inc. purchased the former Edgerton School property on Monday.
The nonprofit has announced its intention of building an estimated $40 million development to house all of the more than 300 tenants of the Thames River Apartments.
Rehabilitation or demolition of the 50-year-old apartment complex, located in the shadow of the Gold Star Memorial Bridge, became inevitable when a class-action lawsuit led to a 2014 settlement between tenants and the New London Housing Authority, which manages the 124-unit low-income apartment complex.
New London attorney Robert Reardon, who led the decade-long legal battle to address the unsafe and unsanitary conditions secured a stipulated agreement with the New London Housing Authority’s board of directors and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The agreement called for a three-year timeline leading to the rehabilitation or relocation of the complex.
Affordable Housing and Services Collaborative was enlisted by the housing authority to find a suitable site for new construction.
The agency had uncovered few options until it looked as though the city’s plans to purchase the former Edgerton School for development of a community center might fall through. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
Connecticut, New Haven-area officials urge drivers to watch for work zones
NEW HAVEN >> As the weather warms up and summer draws closer, more drivers will take to the highways around New Haven and across Connecticut but state officials and construction crews want them to remember one thing before hitting the road: Watch out for the work zones.
Connecticut just wrapped up its Work Zone Safety Awareness week, a state Department of Transportation campaign that was part of a national effort aimed at helping workers and drivers stay safe in construction areas.
The statewide effort has featured messages on DOT’s electronic signboards, rush-hour radio commercials, billboards, a social-media campaign, a poster contest and reminders from several top state officials as well as the Connecticut State Police.
But advocates say drivers need to be thinking about work zones all year long. “Sadly, it’s only a weeklong (official) effort,” said Ralph Inorio, the business manager and secretary/treasurer of East Haven-based Local Union 455. “I wish it could be a yearlong effort.”
Local 455 represents construction workers and laborers across the New Haven area from Milford to Madison and as far north as Meriden. Its members are on highway and road work sites across the region, including many who are working on the Q Bridge project.
Paying attention to work zones is especially important for drivers in and around the Elm City. DOT statistics from 2014 — the most recent year available — show that 246 of the state’s 900 work zone crashes happened in New Haven County. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE
New Super-Strong Concrete Could Fix Nation's Bridge Problems
NPR is reporting that students at the University of Connecticut have begun testing a new "super" concrete - a mixture of chemicals and fiber that's two to three times stronger than traditional concrete.
Standing in a laboratory packed with various scientific instruments, University of Connecticut engineering professor Arash Zaghi gestured to three steel beams, modest in appearance where they sit under the large and brightly-painted hydraulic-powered machine capable of applying weights of up to 275 tons.
Engineers refer to these beams as girders, a key component in bridge support. These three girders, modeled after a bridge in the Hartford area, were pressed under the lab's hydraulic load machine until their point of failure.
But the beams themselves aren't the most important piece in the experiment. What's notable is the cast of concrete around one of the beams, which increased the steel's load capacity when the machine was pushing over hundreds of tons of weight into it. Zaghi said this super-strong and durable concrete could transform the way engineers across the nation approach bridge repair.
Many of Connecticut's bridges are nearing the end of their useful lives: about a quarter of the bridges in the state have been rated as functionally obsolete, and ten percent are deemed structurally deficient. Officials say these bridges are still safe to drive on, but there's high demand for a quick and cost-effective bridge preservation method. CLICK TITLE TO CONTINUE