Outlet center buildings rise on old Palm Beach Mall property By Emily Roach- Palm Beach Post Staff Writer Construction for the new Palm Beach Outlets at the site of the former Palm Beach Mall on Friday. “These are tilt panel walls for retail space enclosures,” said EMJ Construction safety manager Roger Fulmer. (Bruce R. Bennett/The Palm Beach Post) Here, roof deck was being put on building J4, according to EMJ Construction safety manager Roger Fulmer. (Bruce R. Bennett/The Palm Beach Post) Walls are going up on the Palm Beach Outlets, the project replacing the 45-year-old Palm Beach Mall, even as the old mall is still being demolished. After about a million square feet of mall was pulled down, construction crews started on foundations and poured cement walls for the new project. As those walls are raised, the buildings take shape. “You’ll see the construction going ahead very quickly now because the tilt up is a very quick process,” developer’s representative Tom Carabine said. But the old JCPenney store and Firestone are still standing, set to be torn down after hazardous material abatement this summer. New England Development, a Massachusetts-based real estate firm, partnered with Eastern Real Estate and Lubert-Adler to buy the 80-acre mall in October 2010 for $35.5 million. Construction will likely push the project cost to $200 million. Already hotels in the area are seeing business from the construction crews, said Rick Netzel, sales and marketing director for the Best Western Palm Beach Lakes Inn just across the street. But he also expects the hotel to house shoppers in the future, as hotels around Sawgrass Mills do. “There’s a huge buzz about it, because I think the financial impact of the mall once it’s built is going to be huge for the area,” Netzel said. Demolition of Palm Beach Mall started in January. Ranger Construction Industries started on the ground prep in March. The outlet center will be finished first — 80 to 100 stores set in an open rectangular area in the center of the property. That is scheduled to open in February. A strip of 10 big-box stores will be built along the Interstate 95 boundary. The old JCPenney store is still in the way for some of those buildings. Carabine said the JCPenney and Firestone structures have been turned over to the developers. Asbestos and other hazardous materials must be removed before they can be demolished, a process that will likely take two months for the JCPenney store, he said. Demolition will take another month or more for the remaining buildings. So by the fall, all vestiges of the old mall should be gone.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 17:57:04 +0000
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