A 650-acre West Windsor property, formerly the home of American Cyanamid, was to become a mixed use development anchored by an upscale shopping mall. But now the property’s owner, Chicago-based General Growth Properties (GGP), has put the now-vacant industrial R&D campus on the market.##M:[more]##
Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh confirmed the reports that the site is up for sale. When asked what township officials are planning to do, Hsueh said he could only say that township officials are communicating with GGP officials.
“We definitely are communicating with them, and we are going to identify the options available,” Hsueh said, hoping that some ideas and proposals will come out of the discussions that can be brought to the Township Council level.
GGP is a family-owned company. It began with one grocery store in Iowa and grew to include some of the largest, most glitzy shopping malls in the country.
“GGP has quietly hired Grubb & Ellis to find a buyer for the property,” according to GlobeSt.com. The property contains 450,”000 square feet of R&D and administrative buildings. It is being marketed by Ben Shapiro, senior vice president in Grubb & Ellis’ Edison office.
GGP inherited the property in 2004 when it acquired the Rouse Co. The latter had purchased the campus in June of that year for just $35 million from pharma giant Wyeth, which itself had picked up the former American Cyanamid agricultural research campus in 2002. Just six weeks after Rouse closed on the property, Rouse agreed to be acquired by GGP.
At one point, GGP was in deep negotiations with Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom’s to anchor a proposed mall for the site, according to GlobeSt.com’s report, but both of those chains subsequently opted for locations at Kravco Simon’s adjacent Quakerbridge Mall as part of that center’s 600,”000-square-foot expansion.
The site’s various buildings were constructed between the 1950s and 1998 and total 750,”000 square feet. The R&D/administrative portion now on the market consists of 450,”000 square feet, and it is unclear whether any of those buildings would be part of a redevelopment. The site is bordered by Route 1 and Quakerbridge Road, and is bisected by Clarksville Road.
Shapiro says, “General Growth would like to sell this property on an ‘as is, where is’ basis and, as such, they will entertain all reasonable offers.” An asking price has not been released.
GGP’s tenuous financial state is bad news for its shareholders and for its malls across the country, but it could be good news for the Princeton area’s two enclosed malls, both of which are planning major expansions and renovations.
Quaker Bridge mall’s owners have confirmed that their plans to add two upscale stores — Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus — as anchors to an expanded mall, complete with a three-level parking garage, are on track.
Just north on Route 1, Market Fair, which has done well with a homewares-centric theme, has announced that Michael Graves has been chosen to give the mall a facelift.
His work is due to start just after the first of the year, and will be followed by an expansion that is expected to add two restaurants and several more retail stores.
Officials have only released renderings of the interior facelift and the new entrance to the mall on a brochure on the firm’s website. The 24,”000 square foot mall, located on Route 1 at Meadow Road, is home to about 40 stores. It is owned by TIAA-CREF, which retained Madison Marquette, a Washington, D.C.-based firm and a previous owner of MarketFair, to manage and lease the mall.
