Valley News – Powerhouse Mall in West Lebanon purchased by Hanover real estate firm
WEST LEBANON — To borrow a misquote from Mark Twain, a Hanover-based commercial real estate company believes reports of brick-and-mortar retail dying are grossly exaggerated.
In fact, Connecticut River Capital insists retail stores have a healthy life ahead of them. And the company just made a big bet on it.
CRC, a growing real estate investment firm, has purchased the Powerhouse Mall in western Lebanon, a landmark commercial property that has weathered multiple recessions and increasing online shopper migration.
“Despite everything that has happened in recent years, the market has improved; The retail market in general has actually been quite strong and the broader growth in the Upper Valley – as the latest census results show – should hopefully continue this trend going forward,” said Geoff Colla, Director of CRC. “We are optimistic about the retail landscape in West Lebanon.”
Colla, who grew up in Hanover and graduated from Dartmouth College in 2004, founded CRC in 2011 after working in the commercial real estate industry in San Francisco. His firm already owns two well-known prestige commercial properties in the area – the Bridgman Building on South Main Street in Hanover (where CRC’s offices are located) and the Rivermill Office Park on Mechanic Street in Lebanon – in addition to a historic 10th -story Gothic buildings -art style office buildings in downtown Portland, Maine and Equinox Junior, an office and retail complex in the heart of Manchester, Vt.
Colla said CRC paid “slightly less” $12 million for the Powerhouse Mall, which has 20 tenants including LL Bean, Eastern Mountain Sports, Amidon Jewelers, Yankee Candle and the Lui Lui restaurant.
Once the site of an 18th-century grist and cotton mill on the Mascoma River tributary, the Powerhouse Mall was built in the mid-1980s by Upper Valley developer Bayne Stevenson as a retail venue to capture traffic flow near the intersection from two of the busiest highways in northern New England.
Stevenson later sold the property to the New Hampshire Retirement System in 1994 for $6.1 million, according to Lebanon’s property records.
Poor management of the Powerhouse Mall led to tenant exodus, and in 1999 the NHRS sold the property to Evergreen Capital Partners, a Lebanon-based commercial real estate company, for $5 million.
Evergreen, a partnership between Lebanese developers Hans Copeland and Romer Holleran, is credited with stabilizing Powerhouse Mall, which has had relatively little tenant turnover under its ownership despite the struggles of some retailers.
The site, which consists of five buildings including the 111,000-square-foot, two-story indoor mall, is valued at $11 million, according to city records.
A new landlord, especially after a long tenure from a previous owner, can be devastating for renters.
But Eric Roberts, owner of Lui Lui, which has operated at the Powerhouse Mall for 30 years, said he wasn’t particularly concerned.
Roberts, who called Copeland and Holleran “attentive and responsive landlords,” said he expected they wouldn’t put the Powerhouse Mall in the hands of a new owner who would treat tenants ruthlessly as happened in the 1990s.
“I am confident that they have selected a successor to continue this great tradition,” Roberts said via email on Thursday.
Colla said it was important for Copeland and Holleran, who also own three office complexes in Centerra, Lebanon, to keep the Powerhouse Mall locally owned.
“They felt that a local owner would benefit both the property and the tenants, especially given the high concentration of local retail owners in the mall,” he said. (Of the 20 tenants, only three are large retail chains and half are small shops owned by women.)
Copeland and Holleran did not respond to messages for comment.
During the pandemic, many of the tenants compared the Powerhouse Mall to a small town where the shopkeepers all know each other, and said the landlord was accommodating with rent forbearance: only two stores closed, but just as many new stores opened.
Only two stores are currently empty.
Colla said there may be an opportunity in the future to build or expand the Powerhouse Mall – “It’s a big site,” he explained – “but we don’t intend to change much from the start. We intend to support the property as is.”
Contact John Lippman at [email protected].