Built in 1976 and under new ownership as of last year, Chesterfield Towne Center is set to be renovated. (Mike Platania photos)
The new owners of Chesterfield Towne Center are planning to give the mall a makeover.
JRE Partners, the New York investment firm that bought the 1-million-square-foot mall late last year, is planning a phased renovation of the property that’ll begin with the interior reimagining of the food court and main drag of shops, and would also include an outdoor park area on part of the parking lot.
JRE unveiled its plans last night at a community meeting held by Chesterfield County supervisor Mark Miller at James River High School.
While other aging shopping malls in the region have been demolished or had apartments put up nearby, JRE executives said they’re planning work in Chesterfield Towne Center’s main structure, and that there’s nothing in their initial plans that involves bringing housing to the site.
“We’re not knocking this down. In fact, we’re hoping to improve what’s there,” John Fraser, JRE managing principal said at the community meeting. “We’re going to make it look nicer. We’re going to do some things to the exterior that I think are going to be really additive.”
In partnership with Swiss firm Anastacia AG, JRE purchased the mall last winter for $80 million and teased a potential future redevelopment of the 51-year-old property but were mum on details. JRE’s portfolio runs the gamut, from ground-up high-rise hotels like the Four Seasons Hotel in Nashville to mid-rise multi-family developments like the SoNYa apartments in D.C. Fraser said the firm has also reinvigorated existing properties, including a mall in the Chicagoland area.
“Our essential DNA is to try to acquire an asset that has yet to fully be realized, if you will,” Fraser said. “That could mean we’re building it from the ground up, or in this case, buying an asset where we feel we can come in and spend time improving it.”
After buying the Chesterfield mall and the roughly 82 acres it sits on, JRE tapped Los Angeles-based firm Pacific Retail Capital Partners to manage the property, and enlisted Danish urban planning company Gehl to plot the mall’s future.
The mall’s main stretch of shops will be renovated to resemble a more urban setting.
Geoff Dyck, a director with Gehl, said they realized that while Chesterfield County doesn’t have a “downtown” area, the mall is centrally located in the county and “all roads lead to CTC.”
“What we’re thinking about is, let’s think about this as more than a shopping center, but actually like a real urban heart, a place to gather,” Gehl said.
To do so, Gehl said three main areas will be renovated to start.
The first is the food court, which they hope to reimagine as a “central square,” with greenery, new and different kinds of seating and more adult-leaning restaurants that will draw folks looking for date night or trivia destinations. The square would be anchored by a central item like a large tree or public art piece, Dyck said, and it would be adjacent to the second area of focus: the mall’s main north-south retail stretch.
Dyck said they’re planning to renovate that stretch to feel more like a real street in an urban area with planters, tables and stores’ doors open and spilling out on the sidewalk.
The third area is the planned outdoor park, which would populate an area near the mall’s western entrance near the Macy’s and food court. The park would have more greenery, playgrounds and a multi-purpose field.
JRE is looking to begin work on the food court renovation in January, and the next two phases could follow shortly after. Fraser declined to share the project’s cost but said they have all the funding lined up for the renovation. Dyck and Fraser noted there could be subsequent phases of the mall’s redevelopment, but that they’re starting by focusing on the first three areas.
During a Q&A session with the roughly 100 residents that attended the meeting, one person said they were tired of having to head to Short Pump Town Center for higher-end retailers like L.L. Bean and Crate & Barrel, and asked whether CTC will strive to draw those types of tenants. Fraser said they will.
“There’s calculus in moving up sales in a center. With higher sales productivity in a center you tend to attract higher price-point types of retailers,” Fraser said. “The retailers are a little bit like lemmings. There are some lead retailers that you can get into a center and others look at that and say, ‘If they’re there, we want to be there.’”
The former Sears anchor space has sat vacant for nearly seven years.
One unknown is the future of the former Sears anchor space at the mall’s northwestern end, which has been vacant since 2020. Fraser said Sears still has a long-term lease on the space and is currently paying rent.
“It’s certainly something that we all, and I think I speak for Dr. Miller (the supervisor) too, want to resolve in some way at some point in time. But…they’re a business that has a right to be there whether they’re operating or not.”
One citizen pointed out the excess parking currently surrounding the mall, and noted that it is an area that could handle some dense housing that would bring more residents who could support the mall’s revitalization. That suggestion was met with jeers from the crowd.
The crowd was largely supportive of JRE’s plan for CTC, as was Miller, who said he considered revitalizing the mall “one of the key nuts that needed to be cracked,” in the area.
Miller expressed dismay that Lego, which is working on a major production facility in the county, didn’t view Chesterfield as its first choice for a retail store, instead opting to put a retail store at Short Pump Town Center in Henrico, rather than in Chesterfield.
“I just got furious when I found out that Lego was opening their store up at Short Pump,” Miller said. “Man, that got me angry.”
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