The highly-visible 69-acre site, known as the “Burleigh Triangle”—which is formed by Highway 45 to the west, Burleigh Street to the south, and the Union Pacific Railroad to the east—had been underutilized and targeted for redevelopment by city officials. The site, which was occupied by over 1M square feet of obsolete industrial facilities, was largely vacant when HSA began assembling the property in 2005. HSA’s original plan was to vacate and demolish the warehouse building and build a multi-level luxury mall to complement nearby Mayfair Mall.

However, when the recession hit in 2008, there was no market for a luxury mall, and the principals at HSA Commercial were forced to define a new multi-phase strategy that would ultimately satisfy the City’s ambitious master plan for the property.

Solution
HSA Commercial began by adaptively reusing the former Roundy’s Distribution Center fronting Highway 45 at Burleigh Street. The new development utilizes the former distribution center’s existing structures to create approximately 250,000-square-feet of retail space, which through the project’s design, cleverly references the industrial history of the property.

The adaptive reuse of the industrial buildings along Highway 45 constitutes Phase I of a multi-phase, mixed use plan with an urban, pedestrian-oriented design. The second phase consisted of similarly converting a former Kohl’s distribution center into retail space.

Benefit
The Phase 1 tenants include Nordstrom Rack, Saks Off 5th, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Old Navy, DSW and Ulta Cosmetics, and Phase 2 includes a 45,150-square-foot Whole Foods Market. These new retail draws have sparked a development boom throughout the corridor, and HSA has engaged a residential developer to build up to 1,000 luxury apartment units in the “Burleigh Triangle” over the next five to seven years.  The dynamic mix of retail, restaurants, and residential has delivered to the City their vision of a vibrant mixed-use community and has proven to be a “ten year overnight success” for HSA Commercial.