Indoor mall planned for Bronx's Bay Plaza.

Plans were announced recently for a new 900,000 square-foot, four-level, enclosed, state-of-the-art shopping mall to be built in The Bronx. The Mall at Bay Plaza will feature three department stores, complementary superstores, themed-restaurants, entertainment venues and 100 smaller shops, and will be the first enclosed regional mall in The Bronx, according to developers.

Plans for The Mall at Bay Plaza were unveiled at a ribbon-cutting ceremony marking the opening of a new JC Penney department store, the first new full-service department store to open in The Bronx in several years. The JC Penney store will later become one of three department stores that will "anchor" the mall, which is scheduled to open in 1999.

The mall project will result in an investment in The Bronx of some $100 million. Coupled with other retail properties owned by the mall's developers that are adjacent to the 21-acre mall site, the developers are making a total investment of $200 million at the Bay Plaza retail complex.

The plan will result in the creation of thousands of new jobs both during construction and when the project is completed. For The Bronx, the only New York City borough that does not have an enclosed mall, the project will also result in the borough retaining millions of dollars in retail sales that are now lost to other areas.

"This is a tremendous step forward in the re-establishment of The Bronx as a primary retail destination," said Sam Shalem, chairman and CEO of Prestige Properties & Development Co., Inc. Prestige and its joint venture partner, The Shopco Group, L.P., are developing the project. "We have long believed that the consumer market in The Bronx is extremely strong and offers great potential for retailers. With the announcement of the mall, we are well on our way to proving that."

The mall site is situated between the New England Thruway (Interstate 95) and the Hutchinson River Parkway at Bartow and Baychester avenues in the Co-op City area. The location, with its excellent highway and street access, is expected to become the premier retail and entertainment destination in The Bronx.

Shalem noted that the stores and restaurants that have already been opened in the Bay Plaza shopping center that Prestige has built over the last several years are all among the top-grossing units within their respective companies. "The fact is that The Bronx has a large population with enormous buying power," he said.

"Virtually all of the stores and restaurants that we have already opened now rank among the top five performers within their companies," Shalem said. "Kmart, Rickel Home Center, Pathmark and Nobody Beats The Wiz are doing huge sales volumes here, and so is General Cinema with its 13 screens. It's taken a while, but there is now a realization that The Bronx is, in fact, an excellent retail location."

Preliminary interest on the part of retailers in the planned mall has been strong, and the Bay Plaza retail complex is also attracting new tenants for free-standing stores. Staples and Old Navy have already announced that they will be opening stores there. Old Navy has said it will be opening a new 15,000 square-foot store that will be its second in The Bronx, and Staples will be opening a new 24,000 square-foot store.

The ribbon-cutting for JC Penney drew top executives of JC Penney, along with local and state government and economic development leaders.

The spacious, new 166,000 square-foot, three-level JC Penney store will introduce numerous features that set it apart from other JC Penney stores. It will serve as the prototype for new JC Penney stores to be opened nationwide in the years ahead. For The Bronx, the JC Penney store has created 334 new jobs.

Announcements concerning the additional department stores that will be joining JC Penney as anchors at The Mall at Bay Plaza will be made in the near future, Shalem said. In addition, superstores featuring music, books, bed and bath, apparel and sporting goods, as well as multiple-themed restaurants, entertainment venues and a 10-unit food court will complement the mall's stores and services.

"Now that JC Penney is putting its top-of-the-line store here, other companies have taken notice and realized the potential of The Bronx market area," said Roy Praver, a partner in Shopco. "Ever since we sold Queens Center, which Shopco redeveloped in the early '90's, we've been looking to get involved with a major retail project in New York City. Our joint venture partnership with Prestige on The Mall at Bay Plaza, the only retail, enclosed mall development opportunity in New York City at this time, is enabling us to do exactly that. It's a great opportunity for us and for the borough of The Bronx."

Prayer said that the population of The Bronx is roughly 1.2 million, and that it is estimated that the market area for the new mall includes at least 550,000 people, including 37,000 in Co-op City alone.

Prestige Properties & Development Co., Inc., which owns the mall site and the adjacent Bay Plaza strip center, is based in Manhattan. Prestige has developed the existing retail facilities at Bay Plaza, including the 135,000 square-foot Kmart store, Nobody Beats The Wiz, Rickel Home Center and the General Cinema 13-screen multiplex theater.

Founded in 1969, Shopco is a boutique real estate development and management company headquartered in Manhattan. Shopco has developed or acquired over 12 million square feet of shopping centers as well as numerous residential, office and industrial projects.

Shopco's recent urban projects include the development of The Mall at Steamtown, a 554,000-square-foot, two-level enclosed mall in Scranton, PA. A pedestrian bridge links The Mall at Steamtown to a national park, the Steamtown National Historic Site, and the mall itself is built above a six-lane city street tying the mall directly to the city's downtown office district.

In the early 1990s, The Shopco Group completely remodeled and re-merchandised Queens Center, the 624,000 square-foot, four-level enclosed mall in Queens, NY.

For The Mall at Say Plaza, the joint venture of Prestige and Shopco brings together the strong background of both companies to carry out this significant new retail development.