Part 2: Nanuet Mall to Become 'The Shops at Nanuet' with a Main Street [VIDEO]

Last night was an informational meeting between the Clarkstown Planning Board and Simon Property Group, Inc. Simon revealed their plans, walked through the plans and took questions from town officials. Since this was an informational meeting, no questions were taken from the public.

Read about the meeting’s outcome in a 4-part series today and tomorrow. Earlier today, the Patch article went over the . Check that first article for pictures from the meeting. This article will look at demolition, construction and a rough timeline. Check back with Patch tomorrow to find out more on what went on at the meeting.

Demolition/Construction:

Simon plans to start demolition inside the mall and then they move to the outside. They will knock down the buildings they own, which is the main concourse of the mall, the former Boscov’s department store building and the two-story parking structure adjacent to the mall off Route 59. Macy's and Sears will remain as they own their respective buildings.

“The existing Macy’s building and Sears and Sears Auto buildings will remain as is on the project and everything else will be demolished,” said Dwayne Furukawa, regional vice president of development for Simon. “Everything else will become new construction.”

Sam Fattah is the vice president of project management for Simon Property.

“We’re going to have a solid barricade around all the areas we’re going to demolish,” said Fattah. “There’s actually going to be a fence, which is 8-feet tall and has a screen, and then a walkway for pedestrians and then a barricade which is going to be Jersey barriers to protect the pedestrians from vehicular traffic.

We’re leaving all the entrances open during construction. The plan is to have customer traffic still drive in and around to Sears and to Macy’s. There’s no contact between the public and the construction site.”

“We plan to start this work after the holidays, so essentially, Jan. 5 is when we’ll start putting up the fence. So while (demolition) happens, we’ll have the standard protections, like against dust. Because there will be some dust and we do that by keeping the site moist.”

“(Starting in the wintertime) of course is not a bad time to do this kind of work because there will probably be some … snow to help with the dust issue and there will also be less people out on the street.”

“We have to start the asbestos work earlier so we will be starting before January, but the public will not see that. That will be behind locked doors and barricades and the public will only start seeing activity come January.

During heavy rain, this area pretty much goes underwater,” said Furukawa, pointing to the parking lot area near the northeast corner of the site by Route 59 and Middletown Road. So part of our proposal is to put in underground storage systems to handle that.”

Rough Timeline:

1. “Before we do anything, we have to barricade off the Sears building, the two entrances that connect the Sears building to the mall and likewise with Macy’s,” said Fattah. “All the other entrances will remain open as normal and will not be affected at all. ”

2. “Any work that happens after that will be on the interior. So we start with hazardous materials, asbestos abatement. As we all know, these older buildings have quite a bit of that. We have some interior demolition to do as well because some of the asbestos get behind the interior finishes.”

3. “Then after we clean all that up, we start chomping away at the building … starting with Boscov’s and the parking garage and working our way back toward Macy’s.”

4. “As we start tearing down the buildings, by June … the building should be completely demolished and at that point we hope to start  site work and foundation work and start building the buildings from there.”

5. Simon envisions the mall to be open in time for the 2013 holiday season.

More information?

After they’re finalized, renderings of all the drawings shown last night will soon be at the Planning Board office at Town Hall. Also, come to the next Nanuet Civic Association meeting at 7:15 p.m. Nov. 3 at the Nanuet Library’s community room where this topic will most likely be discussed. Simon is on the tentative schedule for the Planning Department’s Nov. 30 meeting.

Read about the meeting’s outcome in a 4-part series today and tomorrow. Tomorrow, there will be more articles looking at parking, access and questions from the Planning Board members