Mall has anchor tenant under contract

LONGMONT – A large-format, general retail store will anchor the northeast corner of the Twin Peaks Mall in Longmont as part of the mall’s redevelopment, a representative of mall owner NewMark Merrill Mountain States said Wednesday.

The stand-alone store will occupy 100,000 square feet of space, said the representative, who declined to be named. Fort Collins-based NewMark Merrill is not disclosing the retailer’s name citing contractual arrangements.

Allen Ginsborg, the company’s managing director and principal, told the Longmont City Council Tuesday night that the retailer is under contract.

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Another NewMark Merrill representative, leasing associate Ross Carpenter, said Wednesday that the company is talking with natural grocery retailers, local breweries and restaurants about becoming tenants at Twin Peaks’ new “retail village.”

“Longmont is a really robust market with a lot of discretionary income,” Carpenter said. “You have the Boulder incomes without the Boulder housing prices, so there’s quite a bit of pent-up demand for a natural grocer.” Natural grocers Lucky’s Market, based in Boulder, and Sprouts Farmers Market based in Boulder and Phoenix, have plans to open stores in Longmont in early 2013.

NewMark Merrill hopes to break ground on the $80 million “retail village” project at the Twin Peaks Mall site in 2013, Ginsborg said. A design plan shows Twin Peaks becoming a four-building project built around a central promenade and fountain. A new movie theater is planned. Dillard’s, which owns and operates its store, will be converted into a free-standing store.

The city may help the mall redevelopment through a mechanism called tax-increment financing, or TIF. How tax-increment financing works: a planned increase in property tax revenue – or the “increment” in tax-increment financing – is used to pay back bonds issued by a government authority. The Longmont City Council in August gave initial approval to a plan to create a metro district at the Twin Peaks Mall site to have the authority to sell about $25 million in bonds to make infrastructure improvements.

NewMark Merrill Mountain States bought Twin Peaks Mall in February for $8.5 million. The current 555,000-square-foot mall at 1250 S. Hover St. has struggled for many years.