Amherst plans to retain, then sell 20 acres of Boulevard Mall site for housing development (2025)

There’s another twist in the saga of the Boulevard Mall in Amherst.

The Town of Amherst has been proceeding with its legal efforts to take over the entire retail site through eminent domain, clearing the way for an overhaul of the prominent 64-acre property on the western edge of town. The goal had been to remove any obstacles to redevelopment by Douglas Development Corp. and Benderson Development Co.

But now officials say they don’t anticipate all of it to go to either Douglas Jemal’s company or Benderson.

Instead, Town Supervisor Brian Kulpa said Thursday, the town expects to temporarily retain nearly one-third of the 64-acre project site, to be sold to one or more other developers to create as much as 1,500 new housing units. That would help address a significant need for student, senior and workforce housing in the area.

The 20-acre portion of land would be located on the southeastern portion of the property, between the Wegmans plaza on Alberta Drive and a new north-south road that will cut through the mall site from Maple Road. And it would be rezoned to potentially allow buildings of up to 10 stories in height.

“I think it’s going to be a great opportunity for some higher-density stuff that we haven’t had in Amherst in some time,” Kulpa said during a panel discussion of town-center developments, with the Western New York chapter of the New York State Commercial Association of Realtors.

The smaller site is ideal for residential use because of its proximity to Wegmans, while the University at Buffalo still needs more student housing, even after a surge in new construction projects along Sweet Home and North Forest roads and in Muir Woods. The state wants to see more affordable and workforce housing. And the town projects it needs 1,000 senior apartments.

“So we think the site’s primed for density,” Kulpa said. “We have a wonderful opportunity.”

Kulpa, an urban planner by training, said he expected that the town’s development corporation – which would hold title to the property – would issue a request-for-proposals for the smaller site sometime between October and December, even though the town will not have taken possession of the land yet.

“The town does not want to own this,” Kulpa said.

But he noted that the site is designated for a planned-unit development, and the town completed a draft environmental impact statement under the State Environmental Quality Review Act. So any future development projects “can expect a fast track, not a laborious zoning process.”

“We’re tiptoeing ever closer to the final goal there,” he said.

Jemal said he was aware of the town’s plan, but would not commit to bidding on the extra land yet, saying it “all depends on price and market.”

Benderson spokesman Eric Recoon declined to comment.

Kulpa has been dealing with the troubled mall since he first ran for election as town supervisor, as the declining mall fell into receivership in 2017. After he took office in 2018, the town rezoned the parcel in anticipation of needing big changes, and then pressured the former owner to put it up for auction in 2019. Developer Nick Sinatra placed the winning bid, but then Jemal emerged as the actual buyer of both the mall and the adjacent Wegmans.

Benderson controlled everything else inside the mall that Jemal didn't, except for the J.C. Penney store, which is owned directly by the retailer through a land lease. But as the developers worked together with the town to come up with a plan, Kulpa said they learned they were also faced with "a lot of strange, dead leases," from companies that were no longer operating in the mall but still had leases. They were also confronted with parking and frontage rights.

So with the support of the developers, town attorneys and agencies began working through their options, settling on eminent domain through what Kulpa called a "balanced negotiation."

The town - through a new urban renewal agency that was created specifically for the mall project - is now moving through that legal process, after J.C. Penney gave up its court fight to block the takeover.

Kulpa said officials are working with Jemal’s company and Benderson to iron out which portion of the property each will get, and are about 75% done.

However, the nature of the future development is still uncertain, although “the mall as we know it probably will be down,” Kulpa said.

He said he expects Jemal and Benderson to focus on commercial and mixed-use projects along the primary street frontage on Niagara Falls Boulevard and Maple Road, with hundreds of thousands of square feet of commercial space in addition to the residential units.

“For us, as a town, we want to promote good opportunities, but we also want stability and sustainability, and that comes with mixed-use communities,” Kulpa said.

The town also has to bring new roads, water and sewer lines to the site. Sewer capacity is a particular challenge, because the mall never required the high-volume pipes that are needed for a residential community. A new 36-inch main is needed, for which Amherst was approved for $31 million in state budget funding in addition to $11 million in town funds. New bus routes will also be important.

But it won’t be easy. “Even if it’s a single developer, it’s a tough project to tackle, because there’s so many moving parts,” Kulpa cautioned.

“We’re trying to do this over a period of time when interest rates have been less than favorable,” he said. “What we do have is both a State Legislature and a governor’s office which are pro-housing and pro-mixed use and pro-growth.”