Business & Tech

Part 3: Nanuet Mall to Become 'The Shops at Nanuet' with a Main Street [VIDEO]

Check back with Patch later today for information about mall access points during construction and after completion

Wednesday 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 on Patch yesterday and today. Yesterday, the Patch article went over the and the . Check that first article for pictures from the meeting. This article will look at parking and the Q&A between the Planning Board and Simon. Check back with Patch later today to find out more on what went on at the meeting.

Parking:

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“Right now there is a mixture of angled and perpendicular parking,” said Dwayne Furukawa, regional vice president of development for Simon. Other than the ‘L’-shaped central road, all parking will be perpendicular to avoid 1-way traffic parking aisles.

“It’s a lot more efficient to give two ways with the perpendicular parking …  with the exception of the main street,” he added. “The preference for that is that we want to give it the main street feel. The tenants really want it to have the combination of pedestrian and vehicular flow that goes right through the middle of the project. We also found that in our projects that angled parking actually makes it the most convenient for one to go in there and to go out versus trying to have perpendicular parking, which causes more traffic problems … through the main street.”

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They’ve looked at parallel parking as well on the Main Street, but said that would be more complicated for drivers than angled parking.

“Obviously the newer site plan proposes the demolition of the parking deck. So with this smaller square footage, we actually have a reduction in parking, but the square footage that we’re proposing versus the square footage currently at the mall, the parking ratio actually remains the same.”

Questions from Clarkstown

How does this affect the quality of life of the area residents?

They’ll be entering at from Route 59 across from Rockland Shopping Plaza.

“We of course thought very carefully about that because we want to be good neighbors,” said Sam Fattah, vice president - project manager. “Construction traffic associated with demolition will come in at one entrance … go straight into the compound and we’ll exit the same way. There will not be any … equipment running around the site.”

“We will have construction around the site later as we redo the … parking lots and curbs.”

“As for as the work hours, we’ll follow the allowable hours … Although we do run a little later if construction is behind or in trouble, but construction will work from 7 a.m. to about 3:30 p.m.”

Interfere with school buses getting to and fro?

“Most of the demolition will happen on site. We will have trucks hauling off the debris that we cannot recycle.”

They also plan to continue working with the Rockland County Solid Waste Authority.

Will the demolition and construction interfer with the natural landscape such as the underlying marsh and Nuarashaun Brook?

“No. The marsh comes through the central portion of the site. As far as drainage is concerned, we have an increase in vegetative coverage, which will help that."

Macy’s?

“We haven’t worked out all the plans with Macy’s yet, but we’re going to replace the entrances. We talked about painting, but it’s not workable” because it would need to be repainted every so often. “We’re going to power-wash and reseal instead.”

Sears?

As far as Simon has gotten with discussions with Sears is talk about the exterior such as curb work.

“We feel like they’re going to come on board though.”

Off-site traffic improvements?

Simon representatives said they do not have plans for that because their traffic study did not show a need to change the site’s surrounding roads and traffic flow.

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. Later today, there will be the fourth article on access during construction and after completion.


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