| By Neil Johnson, reporter/anchor, Big Radio |
A retail manager says the Woodman’s Sports and Convention Center could become a catalyst at the Uptown Janesville mall — Once the work actually starts.
Uptown Janesville General Manager Julie Cubbage says she hasn’t yet seen a flood of developer interest in the mall. She thinks developers will wait to see the vacant former Sears building demolished and ground actually break on the Woodman’s Center.
Once contractors begin to move soil on the site of the cleared Sears building, Cubbage expects the mall and its ownership, RockStep Capital, will begin hearing from developers who could be interested in building new restaurants or even hotels on the mall’s property at 2500 Milton Ave.
The mall already is in talks with a developer who’s eyeing the vacant, former JC Penney space on the mall’s east side, Cubbage says. She says she’s unable to give more details.
Cubbage says the challenge will be coordinating any new developments on the mall’s property that might come alongside the build out of the 130,000-square-foot Woodman’s Center–a project the city estimates will take more than a year to complete.
The mall itself has a heavily vacant south concourse along with large-scale anchor store vacancies. Cubbage says the future of the mall, and the prospect of filling some of those empty spaces with new tenants, could be tied to businesses whose goods or services would support the Woodman’s Center’s ice hockey and multi-sports and convention hall operations.
Yet, Cubbage says one existing retail tenant who always has had a short-term lease at Uptown Janesville has switched over to a long-term lease. Cubbage says that tenant’s decision was in anticipation of the Woodman’s Center coming. She characterized the tenant as an owner of an independent, “mom-and-pop” business that has located in the mall within the last few years.
Cubbage says the deal with that retailer is significant, because it means at least one mall operator sees a bright enough long-term future at Uptown Janesville that they’ve upped their own stakes in tenancy. She says it’s a win-win, because it brings the mall more revenue, and it allows the tenant to grow and expand their retail business.
Commercial real estate broker Adam Shultz says he thinks developer interest already could be heating up along parts of the Milton Avenue Corridor near the future Woodman’s Center.
Shultz recently sold a 125,000 square-foot vacant lot that’s two blocks north of Uptown Janesville. Shultz says the new owner is working on plans to bring new retail to the site in a project he says might come this year.
The Milton Avenue spur near the Woodman’s Center is already seeing development already of a few new chain restaurants, including a Dairy Queen south of the mall, and on the mall’s own property, a new Starbucks coffee shop.
Shultz says developers would likely look at new traffic count estimates linked to increased use of Uptown Janesville under the Woodman’s Center’s operations.
State traffic counts show some stretches of Milton Avenue, such as its intersection at Humes Road, see as many as 45,000 vehicles a day — the most of any stretch of urban roadway in Rock County.
City planning director Duane Cherek says the official start of the Woodman’s Center project will come when the city OKs construction permits. That hasn’t yet happened.
