More new tenants set to open at Quaker Bridge Mall in 2014
A ribbon cutting at Quaker Bridge Mall Dec. 11 marked the end of nearly two years of renovations, including a new dining pavilion, retail stores, landscaping, floors and soft seating areas.
Now, the mall features more than 50 new dining and retail options and more than 100 shops and services, including Michael Kors, the Apple Store, LUSH Cosmetics, Sephora, Sur La Table, The Art of Shaving, Soma Intimates and White House Black Market. The project also created more than 800 local jobs, according to Simon Property Group, which owns the property.
About a third of the mall’s previous tenants stayed on through the renovations, but only a handful of those tenants stayed in their exact locations; most of the remaining stores relocated to new storefronts in the mall.
“Anybody who stayed, the majority all have new stores,” said the mall’s general manager Lynda Benedetto. “So it was a win-win for them, and they recognized they had to go through the ugly to get to the other side.”
The mall is still set to see many changes over the following year. While the ribbon cutting marked the end of the renovations—including the new flooring, landscaping, signage and a dining pavilion—the mall is still in the process of securing and opening new tenants.
Tom Schneider, executive vice president of Simon Property Group, expected nearly 20 new tenants to be opening up shop in the mall over the course of 2014, with a few even opening in 2015.
The current mall capacity is either filled or in the process of being filled, he said, but Simon Property Group is also looking ahead to prepare for possible expansion in the future.
“We’re pretty much filling up what we have available,” Schneider said. “We hope for the next expansion, we will create some additional incremental space for shops. There are some more shops we’d like to accommodate, so any expansion would allow us to do that. But an expansion would necessitate another department store, so we’ll see how that goes.”
Simon Property Group had been considering a revamping of the mall for several years before the current project began nearly two years ago. In 2006, the company announced plans for Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom to become the next two anchor stores at the mall.
But with the downturn of the economy following shortly after the announcement, the plans for the mall to feature six anchor stores never came to fruition. Instead, Simon Property Group revised its plans for redevelopment and in 2010 laid out its ideas for a complete mall makeover.
Community feedback has also been a factor, Benedetto said. The mall’s Facebook page frequently asks for community members’ suggestions of tenants they’d like to see, and Benedetto said she has personally heard from many residents who remember older stores at the mall and who would like to see new tenants added.
The opening of The Cheesecake Factory in September 2012 and Brio Tuscan Grill Nov. 14, 2013 has already begun to drive traffic to the mall.
After the opening of Cheesecake Factory more than a year ago, the influx of visitors to the mall was noticeably greater. Employees and staff members referred to the increased traffic internally as the “Cheesecake effect,” said Benedetto, who noted that that stage of redevelopment marked the beginning of seeing the benefits of the changes to the mall.
“When they opened we started to see more foot traffic, and we saw young teens that we didn’t see here before, and it was really nice…That was the start of the turn,” Benedetto said.
Lawrence Township has also benefited from the changes at Quaker Bridge Mall. Municipal manager Richard Krawczun announced at the ribbon cutting that the township would receive about $749,000 in revenue from permit fees.
But the redevelopment over the past two years has not been without its challenges. Schneider said the difference between new development and redevelopment is that “you kind of know what you’re getting into” with new development.
“In redevelopment, you never know what’s behind or under the surface,” Schneider said. “So you have a lot of surprises, and we had our share of them.”
One particular problem was what construction workers discovered under the flooring. They had expected to take out the tile and the underlayment, but, Schneider said, when the construction team began digging, it found dirt and ponds. Instead, the team had to excavate down about 6-8 feet and rebuild the base and the underlayment before the new floor could be put down.
The main reason some of the redevelopment was so challenging was the fact that there were actually two different projects happening at once, Benedetto said.
“Usually a mall will renovate, or they’ll remerchandise, which is when you swap out the tenants,” Benedetto said. “You don’t do both at the same time. So that provided a whole bunch of very, very unique challenges, because usually a store gets built behind a barricade. We couldn’t put in barricades because we were putting in a whole new subfloor. So it was a challenge.”
But, Benedetto said, with the renovations finished and the last of tenant contracts in the process of being signed, the mall is on its way to reaping the benefits of the past two years’ work.
And, Schneider added, even with all the challenges presented, the project still moved swiftly.
“Interestingly, our original schedule had us opening in spring of ’14, and we were able to get it done in fall of ‘13,” Schneider said. “So as you can see we’re not 100 percent complete, but we’re darn close.”
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