Whats next for the nearly empty downtown Burlington mall space?
BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) - The Starbucks on Church Streets lease is up in October which means they will be the last tenants of BTC Mall Associates to leave the space. BTC Mall Associates, who are also the CityPlace developers, appealed to the city council to find some relief from fees they need to pay to exist in the marketplace. COVID has taken a very weak retail situation and made it much worse, says William Fellows, of BTC Mall Associates. The mall off church street and owners BTC mall associates are looking for help after the pandemic caused many of their tenants in the complex to leave or shutter their doors except for Starbucks which will be leaving in October. They appealed to the city council to get some relief from common area fees they need to pay to be part of the Church Street Marketplace. We essentially are an empty mall and have little to no income, we are looking to see a million dollars in losses in this coming year and we are looking for relief, says Fellows. The total fees that each business pays to the marketplace come out to around $2.87 per square foot. For the large mall property that comes out to more than $71,000 per year. That represents thats a little over 10% of the common area fees they will be taking in for the fiscal year and it represents almost 8% of the total budget, says Kara Alnaswari, the executive director of the Church Street Marketplace. Mayor Miro Weinberger said the city waived a full year of fees for all Church Street Marketplace ratepayers but its time to move back to full services now by reinstituting the fees. The city council denied the request for relief of the mall saying that COVID impacts are something all businesses are facing right now. Unfortunately everybody is in a difficult situation and by granting this, it would increase the burdens on all of the other fee payers on the Marketplace because the burden would have to be made up, says Councilor Joan Shannon, D-South District. For BTC mall associates who are also embroiled in the lengthy battle for the construction of Cityplace, the hole that COVID has left them in will take a long time to dig out of, and that includes even finding new tenants to fill the mostly empty mall. However, Fellows says tenants say they cant sustain being there because of labor and productivity issues. We run into situations where they are looking for leases and rents that are really unsupportable to the expenses of the mall, says Fellows. The city council did suggest BTC mall associates take their appeal for relief to the board of tax abatement who could potentially give them some assistance. Copyright 2021 WCAX. All rights reserved.