A REBIRTH on MEMORIAL DRIVE

Anyone who has taken a drive on Route 33 in Chicopee knows that the once-thriving Fairfield Mall is being reduced to piles of rubble.

Out of that wreckage, city planners hope, will rise a retail center to rival any in the region. But before the rebirth of the site can begin, tenants must sign on to join Home Depot in a development that will eventually feature about a half-dozen 'big-box' stores. And news on that front has been frustratingly slow.

Still, officials remain confident that Memorial Drive holds enough potential for major chains looking to expand that a wave of progress is right around the corner. And with those hopes rides the future of Route 33 as a retail destination.

"We've heard a lot of interesting rumors, like Wal-Mart and Target, but no one has called to actually make any inquiries, at least of the Planning Department," said Katherine Brown, Chicopee's planning director. City officials anxious to see Chicopee's retail sector get a major boost, not to mention residents now forced to leave town for every major retailer outside of Ames, are still waiting for those rumors to become reality. A stumbling economy last year might have thrown a wrench into some chains' expansion plans, but once Home Depot opens up and the property is cleared of unsightly demolition debris, that tide could begin to turn.

A Waiting Game

Only two things are known with some certainty about the makeup of the new development. The Home Depot, finalized as a tenant more than a year ago, is already being built on the site. And city officials anticipate an application to modify the building to accommodate a Subway sandwich shop.

That move will provide a link to the Fairfield Mall's past. After all other tenants had vacated the concourse, Subway and Luca's Pizza were the only two that remained for several months. When Luca's relocated, Subway was the lone tenant, chased out only by the advancing demolition. As for other major big-box tenants, only the site's property manager, PreitRubin Inc. in Philadelphia, knows of any commitments, and it isn't telling.

City planners had expected some idea last fall, but the fourth quarter of 2001 didn't exactly turn into the best time for retail expansion. In fact, with the Sept. 11 attacks coming on the heels of a protracted economic slowdown, retailers were more concentrated on staying alive through discounts and other promotions than on expansion into new markets, Brown said.

"With the economy the way it has been - very up and down - a lot of corporations haven't been expanding, and retailers that had been expanding kind of backed off sites they didn't already have a financial interest in," she said.

City officials still maintain that the old mall site can be a thriving retail center in the vein of a Holyoke Crossing, which boasts six major retailers, including Barnes and Noble, Circuit City, and Petco. While the Fairfield Mall had a sad ending, it thrived in its early years, officials said, and the site could flourish again.

Opened in 1974, the mall boasted two anchors - Caldor and Bradlee's - for most of its existence, not to mention a solid mix of smaller stores in its main concourse. It was still a thriving shopping destination a decade ago, but by the mid-'90s, the landscape began to change. Several stores left the property, and Caldor dealt a major blow when that chain shut down its operations.

The anchor site didn't draw much attention from other retailers, and the mall's struggles began to snowball, leading to declining interest among shoppers and, as a direct result, more defections.

"I think the Fairfield Mall as it existed was slowly dying," said Jeanne Kidwell. Chicopee's community development director. "Nationwide, these types of malls either die, or they're reinvented. I think the best thing that could happen is Home Depot coming in and giving it new life."

Small Steps

By September 2000, when plans were announced for the mall's reinvention, it had only a 50% occupancy rate. At the time, the plan was to transform the mall in the next 12 to 15 months into what retailers call a "power center" - not a mall, but a collection of high-profile retail outlets with one or more anchors, a role Home Depot will fill. However, 20 months after that announcement, the shell of a 100,000-square-foot Home Depot is indeed rising from the asphalt, but the rest of the property is still a landscape of debris from the half-completed demolition, and no further retail commitments have been announced.

"As far as I know - and the developer hasn't shared anything with us - we haven't had any nibbles for any of the other locations yet," Brown said. She added that once Home Depot opens in August, it could generate interest in the other sites. "I hope to see some movement on the rest of it in a year or so." Robin Piree, associate development director of Preit-Rubin, who has been working closely with city planners, declined to comment on the progress being made to draw tenants to the property. The reluctance to comment at this point doesn't surprise Brown, who said there may be some sensitivity due to the city's oft-stated concern over when the developer plans to complete the demolition work.

"We had hoped they would get going on the complete demolition," she said. "It's certainly not very appealing when you drive by. I feel, for the future marketing of the remainder of the property, once that building is down, and the rear of the property is more apparent from the street, it will be more attractive to tenants."

Just getting to this point has been a struggle, Kidwell said, because the mail property had three owners: American Real Estate Holding Corp. owned the Caldor site, with 83,000 square feet of building area on 9.7 acres of land; Fairfield Mall Limited Partnership owned the property occupied by Chicopee Savings Bank, East Coast Marketplace, and the mail connector, totaling 563,593 square feet of building space on 25.8 acres; and Chicopee Holding Corp. owned the property occupied by Bradlee's and Pizza Hut, totaling 118,000 square feet on 15.5 acres.

"I think that we were stuck for a long time because the mall had three different owners, and it was difficult to get something done to elevate it to the next level of retail development," Kidwell added. Since the mall closed, the Fairfield Mall Limited Partnership, whose properties are managed by Preit-Rubin, purchased the Caldor parcel and will sell it to Home Depot when the building is completed. But the Bradlee's site is still under different ownership from the rest of the property, lending even more uncertainty to plans, Brown said.

A Retail Rebirth?

Certainty is what city officials are lookg for. When they compare the retail environment on Memorial Drive with Holyoke Crossing, Riverdale Road in West Springfield, and Boston Road in Springfield, they see opportunities the city has not yet taken advantage of - but could, if the reborn Fairfield Mail site meets expectations.

"I know many people ran hardly wait for the Home Depot to open, and there are probably an equal number of people not so interested in home improvement but want to see some different types of retail available to them," Brown said. "We have a great business climate with a huge investment in industry over the past 10 years, and we're growing jobs, but on the retail side, we don't have a good variety of shopping available to us. Ames is the only place you can go to buy, say, a pot and a washcloth and a T-shirt. We'd like to see more stores available to the citizens here in town."

Kidwell said Memorial Drive could be on a verge of a renaissance, with the Fairfield Mall project coming on the heels of MassMutual's purchase and development of the old Charles River Hospital West, the Hampton Inn hotel project nearby, and the Arbors retirement community, which opened earlier this month. "We've been fortunate," she said. "There have been a number of key developments or, in the case of Home Depot, redevelopment projects that have breathed new life into the city."

Chicopee officials will be more happy, and more relieved, once they have a better idea who Home Depot's neighbors will be. For now, it's a waiting game - but one that holds tremendous potential for a city craving a true retail destination of its own.