This mall is running like a ghost mall

The South Brunswick Square Mall is a ghost town — or ghost mall. But that’s no surprise. The mall, which is nearing 30 years in existence (it opened sometime in the mid- to late-’80s), has long had trouble keeping its storefronts filled.

I started writing about the shopping center in the early ’90s, when one of its many revolving anchors fled. The mall has been home to an array of failing medium-size box stores — Jamesway, Rickel, Channel — and a supermarket. Macy’s opened there temporarily, but didn’t last long. And this has stressed the smaller merchants, of which there have been more than can be remembered.

Home Depot, which opened about 10 years ago $, and Bob’s Discount Furniture are holding their own there now, but the food store closed and a new one is unlikely to move in, given the small space.

So, what to do? It’s not an easy question, but it is one with which the community must grapple. The market ultimately will determine what happens to the center, but allowing it to live in limbo for as long as it has creates real and potential impacts.

First, a shopping center with empty storefronts can be an attractive nuisance. We’re lucky that there are enough tenants right now to keep that from occurring, but vacancies do tend to breed vacancies, and so on.

There also are potential tax implications. Empty storefronts lead to tax appeals, which lead to a loss of revenue, both because the town has to pay back previously paid taxes and because the properties that appeal end up with lower bills going forward.

The appeals situation was so bad last year that the Township Council considered a revaluation — a massive enterprise. Appeals, of course, are likely to happen during economic downturns as real market value and assessed value diverge. But things are made worse when you have a property that is badly underutilized, as is the case with the mall.

My sense, as I said, is that we probably want to get ahead of the market forces that might otherwise determine the future of the mall. That doesn’t mean mandating what goes there, but looking at the zoning — signage, parking, allowable square footage — and trying to determine what will work best there. In the end, the mall may require a complete renovation — remember, Home Depot revamped the back end of the property to suit its needs. In fact, it may need a fresh start, as we are seeing with the Marketplace on Route 27.

I certainly don’t have the answers, but I would like to hear people asking the questions. So here goes: What would you like to see happen to the South Brunswick Square Mall?