Tearing down strip mall at 240 and Shields. [Archive]

bombermwc

02-21-2023, 07:03 AM

Well it's really about time. Piece by piece, that place has been torn down. It seems weird to me that they have done it this way rather than do work to re-hab a lease out the space as it emptied. I mean it wasn't really that long ago that the place was active (movie theatre, furs, shops, etc). But when it started diving, it dove HARD and FAST.

Burlington has reduced the floor space used inside their building and put up dividers. Rather than being the full floorsize of the KMart, it's not more like a newer Burlington. And it's still been busy whenever I've ever been in there (which is honestly, rarely). The parking lot is an awful mess, but i don't see anyone doing anything about that any time soon.

There are a few small shops on the south side of the Burlington building, in what was the Kmart auto shop area. If i remember, it's a rental car, cell phone repair, and maybe something like CitiTrends or something??? But nothing that couldn't very easily move to another location.

So the question now is, what's in the land owner's mind now? With this pretty good sized plot of land, what are you going to do with it now that it's been pretty significantly cleared? Do you start over, with a new Burlington building as an anchor? Do you turn the existing Burlington into an anchor for a new development? There really isn't a need for strip mall space. Just s little down the road, Walnut has plenty of room open still of varying sizes. There's still a bit of space to build at PennPark too. Not to mention the countless smaller strip options. So what do you do here? Newer apartments? Don't need car dealerships, the ones across 240 have been slowly emptying out for years.

So what speculation can we see going in here?