When the Thriftway grocery store closed down four years ago, it had consequences for many of the remaining businesses in the Foxmoor Shopping Center. The supermarket was the center’s anchor store, which is supposed to help drive traffic to all the nearby shops. Despite the importance of an anchor store, the space was left vacant.
Lee Paroly, owner of the Friendly’s located in Foxmoor Shopping Center, estimated that traffic to his restaurant decreased by roughly 20 percent since Thriftway shut its doors. Other business owners felt the burden too, and now the center only has a 50 percent occupancy rate. With no anchor store and no direct passage to Route 33—customers can only enter the shopping center off Washington Boulevard, which is hidden from view along the busy Route 33—many businesses began to suffer.
Just a few blocks down Route 33, however, the Town Center has attracted multiple shops and restaurants to open their business in Robbinsville. While no official plans have been made, town officials have a long-term vision to revamp the Foxmoor Shopping Center in order to create a major shopping destination—one that starts at the Hamilton border and continues along to the eastern edge of Town Center.
“You need to have Foxmoor become what we’re looking at in Downtown Robbinsville,” Mayor Dave Fried said.
Fried said, in this vision, only commercial properties would be added to Foxmoor, rather than the mixed-use buildings at Town Center. He said adding an access road to Route 33 and additional pad sites along the highway are the two biggest things that the township can do to attract new businesses to the center.
Fried cited the Hamilton Plaza shopping center as an example of how a pad site along Route 33 can revamp an entire center.
“That was an old dilapidated shopping center and when they brought in the Texas Roadhouse, that really brought some fresh life into that center, and that center is fantastic now,” he said. “If you could take a page out of a playbook that’s exactly what we can [do at Foxmoor].”
Fried said one way to do this in Robbinsville is to bring in more national chains, stores such as Chipotle or Starbucks.
Fried said many national chains have strict building regulations—from how much parking is available to the proximity of the building to other stores—and the Town Center doesn’t necessarily meet all of their requirements. Foxmoor Shopping Center, however, with its location right off a main highway in town and ample parking, can provide an ideal spot for these places to come to Robbinsville, Fried said.
“The main reason they haven’t come to town yet is because we don’t have any place for parking,” Fried said. “If you had pad sites along Route 33, and you had proper parking, I think we could attract some really interesting, new businesses.”
Despite the long-term plan to bring in new chains and add a new entrance, the mayor said the most important thing that needs to be addressed first is the center’s maintenance issues.
“The most important thing that we need to do is clean it up,” the mayor said.
Both the mayor and business owners agree that dealing with maintenance issues at Foxmoor is vital in order to attract new businesses and customers, especially since they said these issues have been piling up for years under the old property owners, Foxmoor Associates, LLC/Pettinaro Companies.
Fried said the township has been meeting with the shopping center’s business owners, who are frustrated because maintenance hasn’t been done. These issues include repaving the parking lot, getting new signs along Route 33 to catch the eye of potential new customers and repairing areas of the building’s roof.
“All these promises have been made by the landowner for years and nothing ever happened,” Fried said. “I think the business owners in the park have been very, very frustrated and rightfully so.”
While not much was changed under the old landlords, the town officials are more optimistic now that new ownership is place.
Pettinaro Companies handed the shopping center over to the bank, and last month the Monmouth County Court appointed Colliers International NJ, LLC to become the controlling manager of the property.
As controlling manager, Colliers will be the caretaker of the shopping center. They’ll receive rent from tenants and they will make minor repairs—fixing roofs, sidewalks and curbs, for example—but they cannot take up major capital improvement projects while the center is in receivership.
“Once the receiver gets clearance from the court, the title will go back to the bank,” he said. “And then we’ll be able to see what the bank wants to do with it.”
The mayor said that they’ve had many developers express interest in the shopping center, and many of them share the township’s vision for what the center can become—a hub of shops, restaurants and other businesses blending in with the Town Center. However, the township has been exploring options of their own.
Fried said the township has investigated if the shopping center qualifies as an area in need of redevelopment, which they believe it does. The next step would be put the issue before the township council and planning board to see if they feel the designation is appropriate.
Property can qualify for an area in need of redevelopment if conditions of development are stagnant and the property has a negative economic impact, or otherwise has been detrimental to the safety, health or welfare of the community, according to New Jersey’s Local Redevelopment and Housing Law. Once the township designates an area as being in need of redevelopment, it has the authority to come up with a specific plan for the property in an effort to jumpstart the economic development.
Fried said he’s hopeful that the township won’t need condemnation in order to get a developer to improve and invest in Foxmoor, but the option is still worth exploring.
While no developer has officially lined up to renovate the center, business owners are wasting no time to try to get some issues resolved.
Paroly said he and 13 other Foxmoor Shopping Center business owners met with Colliers in his restaurant last month and went over the issues they felt needed to be addressed. Roughly 10 to 15 items were brought up at the meeting, and they ranged from smaller issues, such as new signs being added and fixing the parking lot, to larger things, including the much-desired access way to Route 33.
While the meeting was a step in the right direction, Paroly knows through the litigation process with the bank it can be another six months to a year before any action is taken.
“We’re cautiously optimistic,” Paroly said.
A vacant storefront at Foxmoor Shopping Center bears an ad for Colliers International, the new, court-appointed controlling manager of the center. (Photo by Suzette J. Lucas.),
