The manager of the Rustic Mall project denies the rumor that store owners have been told to leave by April.
By: Melissa Edmond and Donna Lukiw
Manville Pizza owner Vincent Daniello says he’s heard the rumors that stores in the Rustic Mall must vacate the building by April 1, but he knows the stories are not true.
"Nobody notified me," Mr. Daniello said Wednesday. Mr. Daniello said he is staying where he is until he receives notification he must go to make way for the planned redevelopment project.
Some residents may have become confused because of the imminent departure of the Drug Fair store, which is moving to another location sometime in the next few months.
"We will be staying in town, but we will be moving to another location," Barrie Levine, vice president of Drug Fair, said. "It’s really close to where we are now."
Mr. Levine wouldn’t specify where the new store will be.
Joe Korn, project manager for Rustic Mall LLC, also denied Wednesday that Rustic Mall store owners had been given until April to vacate their stores.
"They have been told that they will have to relocate sometime this year," he said, adding that the date will depend on the schedule of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s cleanup of the contaminated soil beneath the mall.
Mr. Korn said that he told the tenants this in November and that he had not notified the store owners of anything new.
He said that when he did hear from the EPA, he would try to give the store owners as much time as he could to relocate.
Mr. Korn said that the borough needs to sign the redevelopment agreement, approve the site map, and buy the seven properties on Beverly Drive near Rustic Mall.
Mr. Korn said in addition to Drug Fair’s move, Leslie Pools will be closing in June. He said the four remaining businesses will be Manville Pizza store, Chinese restaurant, the dollar store, and Speedwash Laundromat.
While the store owners may feel like they’re in limbo, Mayor Angelo Corradino said they will not have to move in April, but sometime later in the year.
"The developers have to give them 90 days’ notice," Mayor Corradino said.
The plan to redevelop, consists of 117,000 square feet of retail space, residential townhouse units, senior housing units, a public plaza and green space and parking.
The proposed redevelopment work would be done in conjunction with the EPA’s scheduled cleanup of the contaminated soil beneath the mall, which was caused by creosote manufacturing operations at the site before the mall was built.
Mayor Corradino said negotiations between the developers and borough agree on moving the store owners to a strip mall next to Bank of America (across from the Rustic Mall) while the Rustic Mall is being redeveloped.
"They were going to build another strip mall and we were going to move there but they haven’t even started building that yet," Mr. Daniello’s daughter Susan Klein said.
"The developers have to negotiate with the owners," Mayor Corradino said. "They all have a lease."
In September, Mayor Corradino said the reason for the delays were based on legislative and environmental reasons. He said the negotiations are dependent on the extent of the EPA cleanup.
He said that the EPA currently owns seven properties on Beverly Drive near Rustic Mall that it will be sold to the state once the cleanup happens. The borough wants to arrange it so that the state can sell the property near Rustic Mall on Valerie Drive to the borough so that the redeveloper can buy it from the borough, he said.
The other important factor is an environmental one, he said. The project includes coordinating work with the ongoing Superfund cleanup of the former Federal Creosote plant, which left the ground beneath part of the mall property contaminated by carcinogenic materials.
Council approved the resolution naming Rustic Mall LLC, the mall’s owner, as the site’s redeveloper last year.
The mayor says that part of that plan will include erecting buildings to replace the old ones where retailers are currently housed and moving them into the new ones.
The EPA project manager overseeing cleanup at the former Federal Creosote site said Wednesday that work to remove about 94,800 tons of soil from the site will be done in conjunction with redevelopment plans there.
The Superfund project was launched to remove carcinogenic material from the soil in the Rustic Mall and Claremont subdivision area. The Federal Creosote company operated there until the 1960s and left pools of the oily substance behind, which saturated the ground.
The cleanup project began with the residential properties, and as of October about 12 properties and 25,000 tons of soil are still being cleaned. The next phase of the cleanup would be the mall property.