To: Town of Hingham Planning Board – Mary Savage-Dunham, Community Planning Director Town of Hingham, Zoning Board of Appeals – Emily Wentworth, Senior Planner
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To: Town of Hingham Planning Board – Mary Savage-Dunham, Community Planning Director Town of Hingham, Zoning Board of Appeals – Emily Wentworth, Senior Planner From: W/S/M Hingham Properties LLC - WS Development Date: January 21, 2020 Subject: Articles Related to the Changing State of Retail Dear Ms. Savage-Dunham and Ms. Wentworth, Thank you for the time and attention you have given to our pending request to update the Special Permit for the Derby Street Shops (Derby Street). During the course of our discussions, we have mentioned the changing nature of consumer preferences which is driving the evolution in traditional retail. There are many published examples that can be cited that highlight the changing nature of retail and shopping. We know you and the Boards have very busy schedules but thought it may be helpful to provide several articles, which provide additional insight into the retail trends that are taking place in Massachusetts and throughout the country. We hope to work with both the Planning Board and Zoning Board of Appeals to update the Derby Street Shops Special Permit, originally issued in 2002 and subsequently modified numerous times over the past 17 years, to include the property under the Town’s 4.17 Shopping Center and 3.8A Clinic zoning designations and to create an agreed upon parking framework that addresses these uses. We believe being designated as a shopping center will provide Derby Street Shops with the flexibility needed to adapt to shifts in the consumer environment. The ability to provide health and beauty services, fitness, and experiential activities will allow Derby Street to serve visitors with a variety of options, which will have the added benefit of strengthening the environment for the traditional retailers on the property. A healthy mix of uses will also help disburse parking demand more evenly over the course of the day as demonstrated by the shared parking analysis completed as part of the permit request. We remain deeply committed to ensuring that Derby Street Shops sustains its place as the premier lifestyle destination of the South Shore. We take great pride in providing Hingham residents an exciting and vibrant space for their weekly grocery shopping, work out gear, beauty needs, celebratory dinners, and coffee with a friend. With increased local competition, we want to diversify Derby Street’s tenant mix to provide consumers with establishments and experiences that they crave. We appreciate your consideration of the special permit request, which we believe will allow the Derby Street Shops to remain the go-to destination for the best shopping, services, and customer experience in the region. Sincerely, Victoria Maguire Director of Development CHESTO MEANS BUSINESS | JON CHESTO Mall makeovers are underway around Greater Boston By Jon Chesto Globe Staff,December 20, 2019, 7:49 p.m. The Hanover Mall will be converted into an open-air shopping center with nearly 300 apartments.DAVID L. RYAN/GLOBE STAFF/GLOBE STAFF As you rush around the mall this weekend, crossing off those last-minute gifts from your list, make sure to pause for a moment and soak in the sights. Look around. It might not be this way for much longer. Changes are coming to indoor malls at a pace that sure seems unprecedented these days. Consider what happened within a 24-hour period this past week in Massachusetts: Cambridge’s city council approved new zoning for a massive expansion of CambridgeSide, but one focused on housing and offices. In Hanover, the South Shore town’s planning board handed out permission to convert the Hanover Mall into an open-air shopping center with nearly 300 apartments. And in Worcester, Boston developer Finard Properties announced its acquisition of the struggling Greendale Mall for redevelopment. The threats to brick-and-mortar retail have never been more real, with Amazon’s ascent into omnipresence. (Side note: New figures out Friday show that the retail sector in Massachusetts shed some 5,300 jobs in the past year, a loss of 1.5 percent, during this booming economy.) Indoor malls represent a particularly troubled part of the shopping world. In the 1970s and 1980s, they were goliaths arriving to stomp on nearby downtown districts. But along came big-box stores, lifestyle centers, the Great Recession . Jeff Bezos. The mall vacancy rate in the Boston metro area remains strong, under 5 percent, according to real estate tracker CoStar Group. But landlords have been forced to rethink their tenant mix in the face of these threats, particularly as once reliable anchors such as Sears and JCPenney retrenched. Even A-list properties, such as Burlington and Northshore, were not immune; Simon Property Group is remaking the old Sears in Burlington into a lifestyle center populated by smaller tenants, and putting a Life Time Fitness where the Sears once stood in Peabody. Bring on the entertainment, the trampolines and bowling alleys. Bring on the gyms, all those rows of humming treadmills and spin bikes. They’ll even be growing marijuana at the Eastfield Mall, in Springfield. Then there are bigger changes afoot at other malls, the kind that bring down exterior walls and strip away roofs. The Great De-Malling is under way. Of the three projects advancing this week, only the one in Cambridge has definitive plans to keep at least some of its common space enclosed. However, New England Development has already walled off the third floor of CambridgeSide, kicking out the shops and building out offices. Now, the developer has the green light for a decade’s worth of construction, adding nearly 600,000 square feet over time of offices, labs, and residences — as well as new shops and restaurants that open onto the street. But the existing Hanover Mall, acquired by PREP Property Group in 2016, will give way to open sky. Macy’s will remain, as will several outbuildings, although nearly everything else will change by the time Hanover Crossing comes into fruition two years from now. (Another side note: The developer of the four- story apartment section is Hanover Co. out of Houston, named after the New Hampshire town, not the Massachusetts one.) Demolition begins in February. And in Worcester, Todd Finard says he’s keeping an open mind going into the Greendale project. (His firm spent $7.1 million on the nearly 22-acre property.) The mall’s largest remaining store is a still- thriving T.J.Maxx, after a Best Buy closed in November. Finard doesn’t know yet whether all of the mall will definitively come down. But it’s easy to picture Greendale going the way of the Hanover project — or maybe the Woburn Mall or the Arsenal Mall in Watertown. Those malls are essentially being blown apart and made into something totally new. The Watertown complex, renamed Arsenal Yards, will even feature biotech labs by the time its metamorphosis is complete. Similar major makeovers could be coming for troubled properties such as the Swansea Mall (recently closed) and the Silver City Galleria in Taunton (barely hanging on). Whatever happens at Greendale will still feature retail. (T.J.Maxx remains seemingly impervious to the Internet threat.) But Finard will also consider offices or apartments, with a goal of presenting plans to the city in the second half of 2020. His decision to buy the mall was driven by his belief in Worcester’s economic future, as a long-awaited renaissance seems to finally take hold. Like so many developers, Finard hopes a new economic model will rise, out of the rubble of an old one. https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2019/12/20/mall-makeovers-are-underway-around-greater- boston/DYbkfgPdNhI0c4KV9hY9xN/story.html Burlington Mall update will include casual dining village By John Laidler Globe Correspondent,Updated June 28, 2019, 3:39 p.m. A rendering of the Village at Burlington Mall, including the Caffè Nero at right, which will open in early fall.DAIQ ARCHITECTS In the wake of celebrating its 50th anniversary last year, Burlington Mall is completing the first phase of a multimillion redevelopment aimed at reinvigorating the venerable complex with new restaurants, stores, and outdoor amenities. The phase one effort involves creating the Village at Burlington Mall, a single-story building housing more than a dozen casual restaurants — most with outdoor seating — and shops, on the site of the former Sears Auto Center, according to Sheila Hennessy, the mall’s director of marketing and business development. Construction of the new 35,000-square-foot building is complete, and future tenants are now preparing their spaces. The mall recently announced that the Village will debut with the opening of the European-style coffee house, Caffè Nero, in early fall. (An existing Caffè Nero inside the mall will remain). uBreakiFix, an electronic repair shop, will open at the Village sometime after Caffè Nero, and other tenants will join them in the fall and winter. Located on the Middlesex Turnpike, Burlington Mall has about 160 specialty shops and restaurants encompassing 1.3 million square feet. Simon Property Group owns the shopping center, anchored by Nordstrom, Lord & Taylor, Macy’s, Primark, and Crate & Barrel. The Sears department store, one of the mall’s original tenants when it opened in 1968, and its adjoining auto center closed last year as part of a nationwide series of closures by the chain. The redevelopment’s second phase, also well underway, involves converting the lower level of the former Sears building to specialty stores and restaurants, constructing new entrances to that building, and creating a park on both sides of the building with bocce courts and other amenities. Outdoor patios also are being built for the future new restaurants.