Owners eye demolition of KP center

Plan to revive Kendall Park Shopping Center leaves merchants worried about their futures.

By: Sharlee DiMenichi
   Merchants in the Kendall Park Shopping Center are facing an uncertain future.
   Representatives of the company that owns the mall have begun informally notifying tenants they will have to vacate their shops to allow the complex to be demolished and rebuilt as part of a plan to revive the shopping center.
   Jennifer Sofia, assistant property manager at IKLP, the company that owns the shopping center, said she has called merchants whose long-term leases have run out, and who are leasing space on a monthly basis, to warn them before letters are sent requesting they move their businesses during construction, the start date of which is uncertain.
   "The people that are there now on month-to-month leases will be getting notice to vacate at some point," Ms. Sofia said.
   Ms. Sofia said merchants may return to the mall after it is reconstructed but they will have to do so under new leases.
   "We do our construction and when we’re finished with the construction, they’re welcome to come back and operate in the mall," Ms. Sofia said of the merchants.
   No strict timeline has been set for demolishing the center but plans to tear down and rebuild the mall are progressing, Ms. Sofia said.
   Ted Kraus, president of TKO Real Estate Advisory Group, the company seeking to draw tenants to the mall, said demolition of the more than 40-year-old structure could begin in the next two months.
   "Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, in the next 60 days," Mr. Kraus said of when the project would begin.
   ILKP has approval from the township to add about 41,000 square feet to the center, to upgrade its facade[bwo: do you mean façade ?, if not, better explain what a fanade is: ] and expand its parking. However, Mr. Kraus said that IKLP plans to tear down two buildings and rebuild from scratch.
   "Out with the old, up with the new," Mr. Kraus said Friday.
   Mr. Kraus said ILKP has not filed an application with the township for the new plan, which is still being drafted.
   Mr. Kraus said the new center would be 96,000 square feet and would have approximately 500 parking places. The center, built in 1958 as part of the Kendall Park development, currently has about 55,000 square feet of retail space in two buildings on 11 acres. It has been in a state of transition for several years, with only seven of the mall’s 17 storefronts occupied.
   Mr. Kraus said that once the company finishes negotiations with six potential tenants, whom he declined to name, an application would be submitted.
   "Once we finalize the deals we’re negotiating, we’ll put in a formal application," Mr. Kraus said. He said he expects the approval process to take between 30 and 60 days.
   A secretary in the Planning Board office said approval usually takes longer than two months. Ms. Selingo said the township planner may take up to 45 days to determine whether an application is complete and then a Planning Board hearing must be scheduled.
   "Some applications take several meetings before they finally get a determination," Ms. Selingo said.
   Merchants at the mall say they have come to expect such delays in improvements to the center because the owners have set several time tables for renovations and no refurbishing project has started.
   "Every time they say, ‘Oh, we’ll do it this spring, we’ll do it this fall, but in the eight years that I’ve been here, nothing ever gets done," said Vinnie Mattera, who owns Kendall Park Pizzeria and Restaurant in the mall.
   Owners of other businesses in the center were unavailable or declined to comment Wednesday. Several did not return calls from earlier in the week.