Redevelopment of Marshfield Mall Moving Forward, But Slowly
Thursday, July 25th, 2019 -- 8:54 AM
(Hub City Times) -The redevelopment of the Marshfield Mall is moving forward, but it’s happening more slowly than originally planned.That’s according to Ned Brickman from Midland Management LLC who first got involved in the project last summer. “A year ago I really thought that we’d pretty quickly have a line-up of mid-box retailers who were going to come in here. And it isn’t happening as fast as we thought,” he said. But Brickman says with Kohl’s store already in the mall, one unidentified mid-sized tenant is ready to sign a lease for half of the original Younkers space, and they want to be open by next spring. “Because of Kohl’s, now we have a deal pretty much in place with another mid-box retailer, and they would be taking half of the Younkers box,” Brickman added. The elimination of the interior mall in favor of exterior store entrances may not happen because of the difficulty in finding tenants, Brickman said, “Because this is taking longer, the mall’s not going away any time soon. I mean the interior mall. And it may never go away.”
And the developer said that some financial help from the city is going to be needed to get the project moving, and that would probably come in the form of ‘tax incremental financing.’ “The economics of this,” Brickman said, “is that the bottom line is we do need help from the city for this. The deal does not stand on its own without some help from the city.” Brickman originally told the council last summer portions of the Marshfield Mall would get torn down, and new construction would be part of a proposed redevelopment of the property.
Midland Management is a new co-owner of the mall with the Fonti family, which owns the furniture store in the former K-Mart location. Brickman said nothing will be built until he has leases in place with retailers wanting to locate in Marshfield, and he assured council members they would get to see the leases before any project takes place. The redevelopment comes on the heels of Shopko, Younkers, JC Penney, Office Max, Sears, and Figi’s Outlet closings.
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