A year-long, $10 million renovation project in Pelham Manor is transforming a 1960s-era shopping center into a brick-and-glass showcase for Westchester County”™s newest anchor tenant and other new and established retailers.
Renovations to Post Road Plaza, a five-building, 268,000-square-foot center at the intersection of Boston Post Road and Pelham Parkway, are expected to be completed in about one month, said Matthew K. Harding, president and chief operating officer of Levin Management Corp., during a recent tour of the property. Based in North Plainfield, N.J., Harding”™s leasing and management company is an offshoot of Levin Properties, a 57-year-old New Jersey company whose founder, the late Philip J. Levin, built the Pelham Manor shopping center and hundreds of others on the East Coast.
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Post Road Plaza”™s new anchor tenant in the main 200,000-square-foot building, Fairway Market, expects by mid-March or early April of 2010 to open a 75,000-square-foot supermarket now under construction there. It will be the popular New York City grocery chain”™s sixth and largest store and its first in Westchester. The grocery is expected to create about 300 jobs.
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Following its Westchester debut, Fairway will open a supermarket in the Harbor Point development in Stamford, Conn., by late summer or early fall next year, said Aaron Fleishaker, the company”™s vice president for real estate and construction.
One of the country”™s highest-grossing food stores per square foot, Fairway as of 2007 reportedly had revenue of $300 million. A private equity firm in Westport, Conn., Sterling Investment Partners, three years ago acquired a controlling interest in the family run grocery business. Sterling reportedly paid about $150 million. Fairway at the same time announced plans to expand in the metropolitan region.
The company last March made its first venture outside New York state in its nearly 70-year-history with the opening of a supermarket in Paramus, N.J., where the retailer also teamed with Levin Management.
“I live in New Rochelle,” said Fleishaker, while overseeing construction crews at the Pelham Manor store. “It”™s the No. 1 question when I go anywhere: ”˜When will Fairway open?”™
“When we look to open a Fairway, we like to have unique locations. We”™re not a neighborhood supermarket. People come from long ways ”¦ We like good access, we like good visibility. We have a great storefront here.”
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As anchor tenant, Fairway will fill a void left by Kmart in 2005, when it rejected its lease during bankruptcy proceedings and vacated its 200,000-square-foot space on two floors. The shopping center”™s two previous anchor tenants, the discount department-store chains E.J. Korvette and Caldor, also went bankrupt.
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Two long-established retailers, Dress Barn and Modell”™s Sporting Goods, have moved into expanded space at Post Road Plaza. Modell”™s this fall unveiled its new prototype store there when it reopened in a 20,000-square-foot space on the second floor of the main building, where 80,000 square feet of retail space remains to be leased. Dress Barn combined its two former stores in an 8,600-square-foot space. Another existing tenant, AJ Wright, also occupies renovated space.
A new tenant, Marshall”™s Shoe Shop, which occupies an approximately 10,000-square-foot space, is only the fourth shoe store opened in the nation by Marshall”™s, Harding said.
“When we didn”™t have an anchor, they all continued to do well,” Harding said of the Levin tenants. “It”™s just a great retail location.
“This area has tremendous demographics. There are more than 1 million people in a five-mile radius of here, which is very unusual.”
