Consumer of Akron’s Chapel Hill Shopping mall specializes in redevelopment

Chapel Hill Mall’s potential likely isn’t going to include things like retail – or at minimum a lot of retail.
Industrial Business Attributes, also known as ICP, very likely in early March will get the distressed Akron shopping mall, which is in foreclosure over nonpayment of taxes.
ICP has a extensive history of reworking the industrial and business attributes it acquires and finding new uses for them.
Officials in Akron and somewhere else in Northeast Ohio say very good things about the Cleveland-region firm, which was founded in 1996 by its operator, Chris Semarjian.
“I assume they [ICP] are as reliable as anyone who’s been in the market place,” reported Sam DeShazior, Akron’s director of small business retention and enlargement. “Their experience stage is there. They have taken management of numerous diverse venues, from industrial all the way to retail. When there is a problem out there, they are not shying absent from the obstacle.”
ICP has numerous passions in Ohio and other Midwest states. In numerous instances, they are standalone, ICP-only developments and, in other conditions, partnerships with another buyer and repurposer of industrial and business actual estate, Industrial Realty Team.
In Northeast Ohio, all those ICP attributes, projects and joint ventures consist of the East Conclude redevelopment of the former Goodyear headquarters campus and turning former amusement park Geauga Lake into a blended-use housing and commercial development. It has other houses in Akron, Stow, North Canton and somewhere else in the area.
ICP also is on the lookout to redevelop Midway Mall in Elyria. With IRG, it acquired the aged Randall Park Shopping mall and knocked considerably of it down to make way for a massive Amazon achievement middle.
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That only touches on some of the projects and homes ICP is included in. Based on the progress company’s world-wide-web website page, ICP has far more than 80 Ohio jobs and properties.
And 1 more Ohio undertaking will be struggling Chapel Hill Shopping mall.
The pending sale is acknowledged by equally ICP and the mall’s present-day operator, Mike Kohan of Kohan Real Estate Expenditure Team in Good Neck, NY, with a closing planned the initially week in March. The Akron Planning Commission will critique the sale and ideas at its Friday assembly.
ICP currently owns component of the mall, the previous Sears. The Sears was just one of 3 anchors there and was not provided in Kohan’s 2016 acquire of the mall. ICP has plans to change at minimum some of that 195,000-square-foot creating for a cupboard-creating enterprise.
Earning way for change
DeShazior has acknowledged and worked with ICP for yrs and stated ICP has the practical experience to make some thing favourable out of the mall. (He explained he has not been among town officers functioning on the mall job.)
Acquiring and restoring homes this sort of as the mall will just take a lot of do the job and also involve cooperation with area officers, DeShazior said. He reported Mayor Dan Horrigan designed reviving or repurposing Chapel Hill Shopping mall an administration precedence within just the to start with weeks of initial taking business.
“We surely want the greatest and ideal use for that assets,” DeShazior said. “Which is a person of the commitments the mayor has to every little thing we do.”
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The town will rezone the mall spot to permit for non-retail employs, such as light industrial.
Elyria is on the lookout to make identical zoning adjustments for that city’s Midway Mall, the place ICP is a person of three residence proprietors.
“They individual the Dillards, the Sears, the Sears Automobile Center,” mentioned Dawn Calvert, Elyria’s director of economic transformation and small business services.
Midway Mall, like Chapel Hill Mall, is mostly vacant, Calvert said. “A lot of the tenants have still left,” she explained.
An eye towards growth
ICP and the two other mall home proprietors are on board with the city’s vision of developing a new “daytime population” on the shopping mall site that would aid surrounding businesses, Calvert reported. Metropolis officers are proposing the mall be rezoned to permit for such points as distribution and logistics businesses and build work growth metropolis council there continue to has to critique the plans and give its Okay, she said.
“We do have a romance with ICP. We discover it to be a really collaborative partnership,” she mentioned. “They have a wonderful keep track of file of redeveloping homes and putting them again to productive reuse.
“We are keen to support them redevelop these properties, get them again into effective reuse and enable the town,” Calvert stated.
A further distinguished residence that ICP is the former Geauga Lake amusement park in Bainbridge Township. The company continues to negotiate with township trustees about its system for a mixed-use improvement there. So considerably, Menards has agreed to construct a store on the web site. Whilst some land has been cleared, design has not but started off.
Jeff Markley, chairman of the Bainbridge trustees, first satisfied Semarjian yrs ago when he coached Semarjian’s son Austin in soccer. Following the Semarjian relatives moved out of Bainbridge, they lost call for a lengthy time period until Semarjian, between 1 1/2 to 2 decades in the past, named Markley and mentioned ICP was looking into purchasing the long dormant amusement park website.
Given that then, it is been a successful and ordinarily cordial partnership, Markley said.
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Markley, who is a landscape architect by education, and other people in Bainbridge want the redevelopment of Geauga Lake to consist of factors reminiscent of the previous amusement park. Markely explained the name “Geauga Lake” even now has recognition on social media and somewhere else.
“Let us build off of that,” he explained. Township officers you should not want such issues as assisted living there or all significant bins and parking heaps.
ICP has read that concept and is incorporating it into their options, Markley said.
“They have done very properly,” he mentioned. Both equally sides are working on bettering their communication, like weekly meetings. ICP employed an individual to function with Bainbridge officials as effectively, he stated.
But he occasionally wonders if ICP is stretched way too skinny in between Geauga Lake and all of the other homes and projects the business is associated in. “The proof will be in the pudding,” Markley claimed.
If Geauga Lake is completed right, “this will be a really distinctive local community,” he said. “It really is going quite, quite effectively. It is going incredibly, really little by little. That’s because it truly is a large amount of operate. … We still have a whole lot of complicated conversations just before us.”
Bainbridge Township and ICP keep on to develop on and strengthen their relationship, Markley said. “We have pledged that it is not going to conclusion in divorce,” he reported. “They are heading to have to determine out how to establish a community below.”
Dependable husband or wife
Stu Lichter, founder of California-dependent Industrial Realty Team, says he is identified Semarjian for 25 to 30 years. Lichter’s company specializes in obtaining growing old and unused industrial and professional qualities around the nation and obtaining new uses for them.
ICP is probably the only other enterprise in the state which is like his, Lichter said.
“We have been companions for a extensive time,” he claimed. “We’ve carried out a good deal of points alongside one another, like changing a whole lot of retail again into industrial. We did the Amazon at Randall Park. We’ve converted a bunch of Kmarts and WalMarts back again to industrial. So, my guess would be, which is his strategy.”
Lichter mentioned he looked into purchasing Chapel Hill Mall. Converting the shopping mall into industrial uses could do the job there, he said.
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“There is certainly so a great deal on my plate, I determined not to pursue,” he stated. “I am not concerned in the Chapel Hill offer.”
Lichter explained he achieved Semarjian when Semarjian was a young broker.
“I believed he was just terrifically sharp, so I commenced using him a large amount and inevitably made him a partner in Ohio,” he reported. “We’ve been near a lengthy, lengthy time.”
ICP and IRG nevertheless do discounts alongside one another, but it truly is not special any a lot more, Lichter said. They now have a “a lot more fluid” romantic relationship that makes it possible for each and every company its unique projects in the state, he mentioned.
“Chris is a class man. He’s a superior operator and the town will be in very superior fingers, in my viewpoint,” Lichter claimed.
Jim Mackinnon covers business enterprise. He can be achieved at 330-996-3544 or [email protected]. Stick to him @JimMackinnonABJ on Twitter or www.facebook.com/JimMackinnonABJ.