In two separate - but related deals - the 55 acres of vacant, former Seneca Mall property along Slade Avenue and Orchard Park Road were sold for slightly more than $22 million late last week.
The future of that land could be made clearer by late January, according to West Seneca Town Supervisor Gary Dickson.
That’s when one of the entities - an affiliate of Amherst-based The Benchmark Group - is expected to file development plans with the West Seneca Planning Board. Benchmark paid slightly more than $8 million for 11 vacant parcels.
What this means to Dickson is there is a future and a plan for what has become a development zombie property and a major headache for the town.
“This project is the most advanced of the ones we’ve talked about over the years,” Dickson said. “Concrete steps have been taken to transfer the ownership, and we are extremely optimistic that this is going to happen.”
A Dallas-based real estate investment group, NS Retail Holdings paid $13,846,154 for a seven-acre parcel along Orchard Park Road that is anchored by a 93,000-square-foot Tops supermarket. Tops has renewed a long-term lease for the property making that deal financially viable.
The larger focus will be on the 48 acres that Benchmark now owns. The company is considering development options, sources say. Benchmark didn’t enter the Seneca Mall conversation until late summer.
Dickson says he is more confident about the soon-to-be-filed development plans than at any time in the recent past. The Seneca Mall, built in the late 1960s, was razed in the 1990s and has been the subject of numerous development plans - none of which materialized.
So why now?
“We’ve been down this road before; other towns have been down this road before when they thought something was going to happen, but I’m cautiously optimistic, I’m not going to pop a cork until some of the big companies that will be setting up there make their formal announcements,” Dickson said.
Dickson says he remains hopeful the Seneca Mall project can be in a construction phase within the next year.
