After years of barely registering a pulse…Planet Fitness is opening new $3 million facility at this mall…

Planet Fitness opening new $3 million facility at mall

planet fitness location

gain after years of barely registering a pulse.
This time a year ago all Middletown residents had were the promises of the mall’s owners of better shopping days to come. But today, the mall that once might have had more potholes in its parking lot than cars is bustling with customers shopping at its two new anchor stores, Burlington and Gabe’s, among others.
And in a few weeks, Planet Fitness will be opening up a $3 million, 27,000-square-foot fitness center near the Towne Mall’s main entrance. The mall’s ownership says that more than 140,000 square feet in the 465,000-square-foot mall has been been leased with new stores, representing an investment of more than $15 million.
“We knew this was a good project,” said George Ragheb, vice president of the Towne Mall Galleria LLC. His California investment group bought the mall in 2012.
“We knew it was going to take a lot of hard work,” he said. “I’m really happy it’s coming to fruition, and that the city and the community have been so supportive.”
Towne Mall Galleria, located just off Ohio 122 in Middletown, is at the center of a highly competitive retail corridor stretching from Dayton to Cincinnati along Interstate 75. The Dayton Mall, Austin Landing, Cincinnati Premium Outlets and the new $350 million mega retail development, Liberty Center, are all within a 15-20 minute drive from the mall.
Still, the Middletown mall has been able to attract national retailers despite newer, more modern-designed shopping destinations in the area. Ragheb said it has taken longer than he expected — three years — to get to this point, but he’s pleased there has been steady progress.
“Now that we’ve opened our anchor stores, we have a lot less work to do,” he said. “A lot of people are finally coming together and progress going forward will be significantly faster.”
Construction has already begun on the new Planet Fitness location — the 10th in Greater Cincinnati — which is expected to open in mid-January. Mike Hamilton, Planet Fitness’ chief operating officer, said the center’s new equipment is expected to be delivered on Jan. 7 and 8.
“We’ve already hired staff and sales ares going well and have been above expectations,” Hamilton said. “We expect to do really well in Middletown, and we’re looking forward to opening there.”
Ragheb said his ownership group has been working on other things, too, such as repaving the outside ring drive around the mall. He said there is more paving planned, but they could not get everything paved before the asphalt plants closed for the season. In addition, Ragheb said they will be installing new parking lot lights within the next 60 days.
The next phase of the mall’s development is to turn attention to leasing tenants to fill space inside, along the mall’s main concourses, and to develop five out-lots at the site, Ragheb said. He said the out-parcels could be developed as five separate stand-alone, single-tenant buildings or five large buildings, each one encompassing more than one tenant depending on the business interest.
Last week, city officials officials confirmed one out-lot project was back on track for the southeast corner of the property that was originally planned to be built and opened by the end of 2015. The proposed out-lot was tentatively to feature at least one restaurant, a Buffalo Wings, and reportedly an Aspen Dental Center.
City supportive of mall redevelopment
Middletown City Council continues to believe in the revitalization of the Towne Mall Galleria.
At its final meeting of 2015, council approved an emergency ordinance to remove the parcels encompassing the mall from the Tax Increment Financing District that included the mall and the Atrium Medical Center areas and place them in its own TIF district.
City Manager Doug Adkins told council this would help in the redevelopment of the mall by creating its own TIF district agreement with the mall owners.
A TIF district captures the increase in tax revenue generated by the private development itself. The community then uses those very same excess tax revenues to pay back the private investors that footed the initial bill for the public improvements and infrastructure required to make the new private development a success.
Alexis Fitzsimmons, city assistant economic development director, said as the area around the Towne Mall continues to develop, additional infrastructure improvements will be needed.
In a staff report, Fitzsimmons said, “(T)he creation of this TIF district will allow the incremental improvements and increase in property values occurring in 2015 to be captured; this presents the opportunity for TIF agreement to be negotiated with the Towne Mall owners, allowing them to obtain financing for further improvements to the property.”
Those public improvements on the property include roadways, water/sewer infrastructure, other utilities such as the construction, reconstruction of gas, electric and communications service facilities, stormwater, streetscape/landscapes, and acquisition of additional real estate and easements.
The emergency ordinance was approved so the city could take immediate action to create the new TIF district. The agreement would establish a 30-year, 75 percent exemption for the new valuation of mall parcels that would go into fund to pay for these improvements.
As part of the recently enacted School Compensation Agreement, the city of Middletown will pay the Middletown City School District an amount equal to 25 percent of the amount of the Towne Mall Galleria TIF revenues.
Fitzsimmons said she did not know how much those revenues would be as the city is awaiting information from the mall owners on the amount of improvements that have been made and that they plan to make.
City to put more focus on retail
City officials are in the midst of developing a retail recruitment strategy to help identify and recruit national retailers to Middletown as well as looking at other ways to help support local retailers.
At a national conference that Adkins attended in Seattle last fall, he learned more about how retail site selectors use set packages to select new retail locations.
“They know that if the site under consideration has every one of their desired demographics, the location is always successful,” he said. “If the site is missing key indicators, the retailer moves on to locations that match their exact specifications.”
Adkins said that Buxton is the nation’s largest firm that gathers these key demographics and sells the information to
retailers to assist in new site selections.
“A few years ago, Buxton realized that those key desired demographics could be reverse-engineered to help communities recruit retailers that were perfectly suited to that city’s demographics,” Adkins said.
In a staff report to council, Adkins said the company takes a community’s existing demographics and matches them to retailers looking for locations that you have available.
“They not only provide the data and reports needed to recruit national retail to the city, but they can also work with regional retailers to fill existing vacant locations in our strip centers,” he said. “They can set up meetings between retailers and the city to facilitate introductions and to get the city in contact with the site selection decision-maker at each retailer.”
While there are a number of firms that do this type of work, Adkins said Buxton is the largest. He also said the city has made calls to existing Buxton municipal customers and the reviews were favorable.
Adkins said the city looked at other smaller firms who perform this type of work, but they lacked the clout and exposure that Buxton brings to the city’s recruiting efforts.
In an ordinance that was introduced at council’s Dec. 15 meeting, Adkins proposed the city to enter a three-year contract with Buxton for $50,000 per year that would be paid out of the city’s Civic Development Fund. The agreement allows for cancellation in years two and three if the city is not satisfied with Buxton’s efforts.
Adkins said Buxton would be the best company to hire if the city wants to bring more retail back to the city. Council will consider the ordinance for possible adoption at its Jan. 5 meeting.