 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Shopping Centers Today -> June 2004
 PRINT THIS STORY: |
  CHANGE TEXT SIZE: |
GLOOM TO GLAMOUR
Thor Equities knocks long-moribund Brooklyn, N.Y., mall into shape
BY IAN RITTER
 |
| The Gallery at Fulton Street as it looked before (above), and as it appears today after receiving some TLC from Joseph. J. Sitt’s (below) Thor Equities. |
 |
“The saddest shopping mall” The Village Voice called the center in 2002. “A group of unoccupied spaces are located in the basement,” the free-distribution paper added, “where a brave exploration down the dark corridor will lead you to the gothic horror of a shabby dentists’ office.”
The center opened in 1980 as the Albee Square Mall, built by Garden City, N.Y.-based Rentar Development Corp., designed by Gruen Associates and touted as part of a downtown Brooklyn revitalization.
The mall itself was not particularly revitalized. Rentar sold it to Forest City Ratner in 1990, which later renamed it the Gallery at MetroTech, though no major renovation accompanied the name change. The center always had trouble drawing national retailers and competing with the shops on the street outside, observers say. Toys ‘R’ Us opened in 1993 to much fanfare, but no other large chains have followed since.
“It needed an upgrade,” said Michael Weiss, executive director of downtown Brooklyn’s 25-block MetroTech Business Improvement District, in something of an understatement. “The store mix was not attracting people inside.”
There are still holdovers from the past. In the basement the Tec One Spy store sells knives and karate weapons; the second floor features a closeout store called Bankruptcy Warehouse.
But Thor founder Joseph J. Sitt, who bought the property in 2001, is undeterred by its murky history. He is confident that the new Gallery at Fulton Street, as he later renamed it, and the tenants he plans to bring in, will finally realize the potential of the place.
“We’re the only property in Brooklyn that’s got anywhere near the size that retailers need to come in [to the market],” he said.
To be sure, there’s no longer anything murky about the three-level, 250,000-square-foot center’s layout and physical appearance. Much of the basement still awaits new tenants, but the center is no longer dark dimly lit.
Thor has installed floor-to-ceiling windows at the entrance and a huge skylight. There are granite floors, gold handrails and new signage. When everything is done, it will be a “Bellagio Hotel” of malls, Sitt says, referring to the posh hotel-casino in Las Vegas.
The two-level Toys ‘R’ Us is still the only major national tenant, but that will change soon, executives say. National women’s apparel chain Forever 21 has signed on and plans to open this month.
Sitt says he is talking to department stores, big-box tenants, specialty retailers and everything in between.
Besides renovations, the firm plans to add nearly 400,000 square feet of retail and a 39-story office and residential tower. When it’s completed in four years (at a cost of some $675 million), the center will comprise 1.4 million square feet of mixed-use space, says Sitt.
“There’s been tremendous interest in coming here,” said Peter Lockhart, Thor’s executive vice president of property management. “I think downtown Brooklyn is on fire.”
The area around the Gallery certainly gets its share of pedestrian traffic. Located on Fulton Street and Flatbush Avenue, the center is near an eight-block, urban-street shopping area called The Fulton Mall. Around the corner is the renowned Junior’s restaurant, famous for its cheesecake.
About 70,000 people make up the downtown Brooklyn work force, many of whom work at the MetroTech Center, a 6.5 million-square-foot office complex opened by Forest City Ratner in the early 1990s. Residents of the nearby Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill and Fort Greene abound too.
 |
Thor’s greatest task, observers agree, is to draw shoppers from the popular Fulton Mall street area into the Gallery. “If they can’t make that happen, then no one can,” says Breslin, pointing to Thor’s track record in similar urban areas as evidence that the firm is up to the job.
The 39-year-old Sitt has been involved in urban retail since his undergraduate days at New York University in the 1980s. A native of working-class Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, Sitt describes growing up in a neighborhood of blacks, whites, Hispanics and Jews shunned by the major retailers.
“I’m a tough street kid,” he said. “An urban guy.”
How fitting — among Sitt’s first endeavors was the design of reinforced steel rooftop doors, to keep lawless tough street types from breaking into retail stores from overhead. He also wanted to bring more large, glass doors to street-level retail in urban neighborhoods, where metal doors are much more evident.
During this time Sitt bought a few storefronts in New York inner-city neighborhoods, but he had problems drawing national chains to such areas. Frustrated, he became a retailer himself, founding the Ashley Stewart urban women’s chain in 1991 and expanding it to nearly 400 units. Sitt also bought Petrie’s Marianne Stores and the Children’s Place chain and introduced them to urban areas. (He has since sold off his retail holdings.)
“There were no great services in the urban marketplace,” Sitt recalls. “I said, ‘Why shouldn’t the urban marketplace have the same thing as the suburban market has?’”
His retail experience led him into the urban real estate business. In late 2000 he began acquiring large shopping centers in urban environments. Thor Equities (named after comic book superhero Thor) now owns centers in the Atlanta, Chicago and Philadelphia metropolitan areas, among others. Thor Urban Retail Consulting, a subsidiary formed in 2001, advises national retailers seeking to enter inner-city markets. Those retailers then become future tenants in his urban centers, Sitt says.
The Thor corporate philosophy, stresses Lockhart, is to bring an upscale shopping environment to urban areas normally denied such retail.
Thor malls are operated like fancy department stores, he says. A tuxedo-clad greeter now stands at the entrance to the Gallery — a far cry from what a shopper would experience upon entering the place just two years ago. And though not all the stores are in place yet, at least that Village Voice reporter need no longer fear coming in. There are no dark corridors anymore, and no dentists.
 | Current Issue July 2008 |