Steeplegate Mall owners gets OK to start partial demolition

Part of the Steeplegate Mall where Sears once stood, is now fenced off waiting for the go-ahead for demolition.

Part of the Steeplegate Mall where Sears once stood, is now fenced off waiting for the go-ahead for demolition. GEOFF FORESTER / Monitor file

By DAVID BROOKS

Monitor staff

Published: 07-18-2024 1:44 PM

Modified: 07-18-2024 4:38 PM


The walls should start coming down soon at Steeplegate Mall, 35 years after they were erected.

The Concord Planning Board unanimously approved Wednesday an amendment to the Steeplegate site plan that will allow most of the mall to be torn down. This differs from the standard route for getting city permission to demolish buildings partly because of the project’s complexity – about one-fifth of the mall, including the JCPenney store, will not be taken down – but mostly because of concern about people breaking into the empty building to post videos online, which spurred owners to speed up the request.

“We have become an attractive nuisance for a form of trespass and vandalism called urban exploring,” said Ari Pollack, an attorney representing Onyx Partners, owner of the mall property. “The public safety issue simply can’t wait for a comprehensive development plan to take its full course, for site plans to take their full course, for conditions of approvals to be analyzed and resolved, plans to be signed and permits to be issued.”

A few conditions must be met, which does not appear to be an obstacle, and then Onyx can apply for a demolition permit and begin work.

Wednesday’s decision does not affect the adjoining Regal Cinema property, which is set to be part of the new mixed-use development and is owned by an affiliated Onyx company. No application has been submitted seeking removal of the closed theater, which does not appear to have become a source of online videos.

“When that building is ready to come down, it will be a complete demolition and we won’t need a site plan amendment,” Pollack said.

As described Wednesday, plans are to demolish 425,000 square feet of the 550,000-square-foot mall, leaving the concrete pad. The three businesses that have remained open at the mall – JCPenney,  The Zoo Health Club and Altitude Trampoline Park – are slated to stay open during all of demolition and construction. Walls on those businesses structures which are currently hidden by the mall will be refinished after the mall is removed so they look like the exposed walls, Pollack said.

Wednesday’s public hearing before the Planning Board heard opposition from Laura Gandia, an attorney for Susan Silverman, who owns the land on which the TD Bank sits on the edge of the mall parking lot. The bank and stand-alone Applebee’s restaurant property are separately owned and not part of the redevelopment, but are part of a condominium agreement with the mall itself.

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Gandia expressed concern that the site plan amendment lacked details about such aspects of the demolition which will affect the bank.

“What is this going to do to water flow ... to storm management? We have no idea. We are a direct abutter; what is going to happen?” she said. “It lacks information on staging area, traffic circulation, waste disposal, just to name a few. … Drainage, topography, lighting – that’s not public safety. We do not see the connection between granting the waivers and urban explorers.”

Onyx is proposing to build a mixed-use development on the mall and cinema properties, with some 600 apartments in three buildings with ground-floor retail plus some other stand-alone retail. 

Steeplegate Mall opened in  1990.