Another former Lord & Taylor store is being repurposed, this time as a medical lab and office facility, as new kinds of users line up for empty mall anchor space.
Accu Reference Medical Laboratory has acquired a 124,000-square-foot former Lord & Taylor site at the Woodbridge Center mall in Woodbridge, New Jersey, for $11.5 million, according to the company's local broker, Marvin Glazerman of Glazerman Realty.
The seller was HBC, the parent of the Hudson's Bay and Saks Fifth Avenue chains with headquarters in New York City and Toronto. It has been aggressively looking to redevelop, sell or find new occupants for the portfolio of vacant Lord & Taylor stores it owns — even lining up streaming giant Netflix as a tenant for one. The Woodbridge sale is the latest chapter in that quest.
The demise and downsizing of department store chains — including the likes of Sears — has retail owners and mall landlords scrambling and becoming more creative about how they fill that space. Healthcare providers and a warehouse club have taken over mall anchor locations in places like New Jersey.
HBC didn't immediately respond to emails from CoStar News seeking comment Friday, and Accu Reference didn't respond to a phone call.
The company, currently based in Linden, New Jersey, is a medical laboratory service that provides tests for the diagnosis, screening and evaluation of diseases and health conditions. It has labs not only in New Jersey but New York, Connecticut, Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia.
HBC's strategy
Accu Reference is leasing in Linden for its headquarters, but the company is growing and was seeking a bigger site that includes enough parking spaces so it won't be overcrowded, Glazerman told CoStar News.
"So they were looking for a location close to where they are so that they wouldn't lose a portion of their employee base, and one that would accommodate their current needs as well as provide them with room for expansion," he said.
Accu Reference plans to gut and renovate the Lord & Taylor at Woodbridge and to bring about 300 employees there, according to Glazerman.
HBC had once been the owner of the Lord & Taylor department stores, a chain that was liquidated with all its locations shuttered. The Woodbridge location closed on Christmas Eve in 2019. But HBC retained ownership of a number of the vacant physical stores, including the one in Woodbridge, and has had success in some cases in reactivating them with new tenants.
Enter Netlfix
For example, Netflix has leased a 120,000-square-foot former Lord & Taylor at the King of Prussia mall in Pennsylvania from HBC as a Netflix House. It will be an entertainment venue themed around hit Netflix shows that will include retail as well as food and beverage space, theater, escape rooms, mixed reality games, live events, and other activities.
Earlier this year, the J.C. Penney relocated from the Wayne Towne Center to a vacant Lord & Taylor, owned by HBC, at the adjacent Willowbrook mall in Wayne, New Jersey.
HBC is also redeveloping a former Lord & Taylor location at 609 North Ave. in Westfield, New Jersey, into a mixed-use property with office buildings, retail space and 205 residential units. And in 2022, HBC announced plans to convert three former Lord & Taylor stores in the Boston area into space for life science tenants.
HBC isn't the only one enlisting nontraditional tenants for vacant mall anchor space. Two years ago, BJ’s Wholesale Club opened a store in part of the space once occupied by a Sears at the Willowbrook mall. And several years ago a hospital chain, Cooper University Health Care, opened an outpatient facility at a large vacant Sears anchor at the Moorestown Mall, which is located outside Philadelphia in Moorestown, New Jersey.
Beleaguered mall
The Woodbridge mall has had its challenges. Sagehall, a New York private equity firm, acquired it in February in a liquidation sale at a steep discount for $70.4 million.
Sagehill didn't respond to an email from CoStar News asking about its plans for the mall, including possible redevelopment. But Glazerman offered his insight from his dealings with the mall's new landlord.
"Sagehall wants to take the existing mall and slightly reposition it towards more entertainment venues rather than straight-forward retail venues," he said. "For example, Dave & Buster's is already in that mall and they're doing well."
Glazerman characterized Accu Reference's move to the Woodbridge mall as a plus for the shopping center.
"The advantage to the mall is that they've got 300 employees," he said. "A good chunk of them are going to shop in the mall, get their lunch in the mall. So their arrival is very, very positive for the mall. They'll make traffic and spend money there."
For the record
Marvin Glazerman and Herb Glazerman of Glazerman Realty represented Accu Reference Medical Laboratory in the acquisition.