Photo | Google
The Greendale Mall sits just off I-190 in Worcester
Updated: November 25, 2020
New Greendale Mall plan calls for demolition in favor of apparent Amazon warehouse
Photo | Grant Welker
The Greendale Mall has nearly emptied out, with a T.J. Maxx and HomeGoods its final tenants.
By Grant Welker
Plans for remaking the Greendale Mall site in Worcester have changed dramatically since a vision for a new mixed-use development was raised nearly a year ago.
Now, the mall's Boston-based owner wants to demolish the largely vacant mall in order to build a warehouse and distribution center for a tenant that appears to be Amazon. The new building would roughly share the same outline as the mall today.
Todd Finard, the CEO of owner Finard Properties, said Tuesday the firm has a non-disclosure agreement for the development and couldn't yet share more details. But details in permitting applications give clues that the tenant appears to be Amazon: a disclosure that the tenant plans to have 10,000 electric vans by 2022 and 100,000 by 2030, and is working on a strategy to be net zero carbon across their business by 2040.
Those details match exactly those of Amazon, as does the building's proposed blue and gray exterior. Plans also call for a floor plan matching that of a typical retail packaging warehouse.
Amazon has expanded across Central Massachusetts and areas closer to Boston, among other places, as more and more consumer traffic flows to the e-commerce giant. Amazon is moving into a fulfillment center spanning 320,000 square feet in Milford that will be its second such center in the town. The site sold this month for nearly $53 million.
The planned single-story, 121,000-square-foot warehouse requires site plan approval and is slated to go before the Worcester Planning Board.
[Related: Malls stare down pandemic, increased vacancies]
The 380,000-square-foot Greendale Mall has slowly emptied in the past decade, and now sits largely empty. Among the few tenants remaining is a T.J. Maxx and HomeGoods store.
Finard Properties paid $7.1 million for the mall — just $18 per square foot, far below what other area retail plazas have changed hands for — last December. Soon after, the company gave general plans for knocking down the mall in favor of a development that would include apartments and medical offices.
The firm said then it was excited to be part of Worcester's growth and it had hired a design and engineering team to draw up plans for the remade property.
“The era of enclosed shopping centers has passed,” Finard, the CEO, said at the time. “Shoppers have embraced places like Northborough Crossing and MarketStreet in Lynnfield with its apartments, health clinic, medical offices, and retail.”
The Greendale Mall's demise would leave Worcester without an enclosed shopping mall for the first time in decades. The Galleria mall downtown was demolished and replaced with a mix of uses, including an office building, hotel and apartments. Instead, the area's retail destinations have shifted outside of the city, including to the Shoppes at Blackstone Valley in Millbury, which opened in 2003, Northborough Crossing, which opened in 2011, and Lakeway Commons, which opened in Shrewsbury in 2017.
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Anonymous
November 26, 2020
Shouldn't be any traffic issues - right?
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