Vacant stores fill up quickly in local market
Strip mall owners report
little difficulty in finding
new tenants
LIndsey Siegle The Royale Theatre, Monmouth Street, Red Bank, is among one of the vacant properties recently snapped up by businesses looking to enter the area.
In recent months, two major retailers have announced that they will be closing stores in the area. In Middletown, Bradlees is going out of business, and Sears is closing its hardware store in the Shrewsbury. Both businesses were significant stores in large strip malls.
While no one looks on those or any other business closings as good news, according to people in the real estate and property management business, they are not a symptom of broader economic problems.
The economy is still good, and vacant stores don’t remain vacant for long in this area, according to real estate professionals.
Jerrold Bermingham, managing director of National Realty and Development, Purchase, N.Y., owners of the Shrewsbury Plaza on Route 35, where the 20,000-square-foot Sears Hardware store is closing soon, said his company has a number of prospects already. "We are very optimistic about how this will do. It’s an extremely successful mall."
Bermingham added that National Realty and Development is most directly affected by the retail-sales and consumer-spending portion of the economy. "There’s been a slowdown, but we see a positive trend coming in part due to lower interest rates."
A Paramus-based company called Vornado Realty owns the Bradlees shopping center, but it is not talking to reporters about anything to do with the shopping center, an unidentified woman who answered the phone at the company’s office told The Hub on Monday.
According to Middletown Planning Board Director, Tony Mercantante, the rumor is that Value City wants to take over the Bradlees space, but he is isn’t certain about this. "There’s no reason for them to come before this board since it would be a permitted use."
Bloomberg News Service reported earlier this week that Stop & Shop Supermarket Co. purchased the right to sell the 111 properties (primarily leases) owned by Bradlees Inc. for $150 million.
Stop & Shop, a chain of supermarkets now owned by Royal Ahold NV, the Netherlands, owned Bradlees from 1961 to 1992.
Mercantante said he doesn’t think it will take very long to lease the space. "What tends to happen with those large spaces in these thriving shopping centers is that they are easier to fill than smaller spaces and with the economy the way it is now, it shouldn’t remain vacant for long."
Across Route 35 from Sears Hardware there is a recently vacated store in the Treasure Island Plaza. According to Donna Scoppetuolo, property manager for Treasure Island Plaza, owned by Market Place I, Limited, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Klein Sleep, a division of Sleepy’s Inc., the mattress company that seems to have stores all along Route 35, is going to take over the vacant Golf Day store. "It looks vacant, but to us it’s not vacant. Sleepy’s is anxious to get in as quickly as possible."
There is a recently opened Sleepy’s store in Shrewsbury, roughly one mile north of Treasure Island Plaza ,and slightly more than a mile south of the location there is a Sleepy’s in Eatontown.
As for large vacancies that are not located in strip malls, Jeff Brothers of Brothers Real Estate in Red Bank, said he does not want to speculate about what’s going to happen with the economy, but his business is doing well.
"Negotiations with the Two River Theatre Company for the Blaisdell Lumber building are ongoing. It remains to be seen where we go with that."
Regarding downtown Red Bank, the demand is unprecedented for office and retail space, said Brothers.
"I made my biggest sale last year, an 80,000-square-foot office space in Eatontown, the former Roberts Pharmaceutical Corporation headquarters.
"We closed on it in August, a bit before the slowdown in the economy. It sold for $10 million."
Speaking about the 26,000-square-foot Sansone building on Broad Street in Red Bank, Brothers said it has been leased to the Atlantic Club, a fitness center. "The Atlantic Club is regarded as one of the top clubs in the country," he said.
The Atlantic Club’s main facility is in Wall. The company is slated to go before the Planning Board with an application in a special meeting on Monday. "They are putting lots of dollars into it," Brothers said.
Another large facility that has been vacant for quite some time has been sold. According to Emmanuela Angelo, owner of the Pastoria on Linden Place, she has sold the Royale Theatre building on Monmouth Street, to three Brooklyn men who, as far as she knows, plan to convert it into a sports bar filled with sports memorabilia.