The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
City sells shopping center
New owners want to keep Shoreway tenants, find new ones
The Shoreway Shopping Center, Sheffield Lake’s main complex of stores at East Lake and Lake Breeze roads, has sold for almost $1.8 million to a group of New York investors.
The city announced the sale this week. As part of the deal, the city retains ownership of three properties which formerly were the post office, bowling alley and drive-thru beverage store. In the city’s announcement, Mayor Dennis Bring said this is a primary reason the sale was lower than the listing price.
The new owners told city officials they will keep the center open and make repairs to the building and parking lot.
Daniel Ghalchi, a partner in Long Island, N.Y.-based new owner Sheffield Shoreway LLC, agreed.
“Our goal is to bring in new tenants, keep the tenants of course that we have in there and bring in new tenants and to make this a community center in all ways,” Ghalchi said.
The shopping center’s parking lot has hosted community festivals, including the Sheffield Lake Community Day parade and festival in July.
The new owners have pondered converting part of the parking lot to a green space that could be better suited for hosting events, Ghalchi said.
“We know that it’s a local shopping center that everyone needs to go to and goes to because it’s the only shopping center in town, really,” Ghalchi said. “Our main goal is to keep that going, bring in more people and hopefully more business and more places for people in the community to go to.
“We’re happy to be in the community,” he said. “We’re looking forward to growing with the community and trying to make this center a place where families and businesses and all realms of the community will be able to utilize it.”
Ghalchi said he and the ownership company partners hope to visit the city in person in the coming weeks and may hire a local management company to serve as a local point of contact for current a prospective tenants.
In the city’s announcement, Bring said keeping the center open was a key element of negotiations as he believed it was important that Apples and Rite Aid continue to operate, in addition to other current tenants.
Those include Dollar Tree, Little Caesars, Exclusive Balloons, Caribe Soul Cafe, Mona Lisa Eco Salong + Spa, a daycare center and a Goodwill store.
He said over the past six or seven years, the city had been approached by several prospective buyers but negotiations fizzled because some wanted to tear the center down, while others wanted the deal to include the city’s Boat Launch and Domonkas Library properties, none of which Bring believed was in the best interest of residents or the city.
Up to the sale, the city was negotiating for an auto parts store to join the roster of tenants at the center, Bring said to The Morning Journal
The city purchased the shopping center 2008 and has had it on the market for some time, Bring said. “We’ve been working on this for quite some time and throughout my tenure as mayor we’ve had numerous conversations with people and investors and everything else, as far as selling it,” he said.
The city administration and the new owners are excited for the change, Bring said. In town, some people will be sad, and some people will be ecstatic, the plaza has left the city’s ownership, he said.
Along with shopping, the center became known for a wind turbine generating electric power for the Apples supermarket.
That turbine and tower were taken down this year, but that was not related to the sale, Bring said.
The city’s contract with the turbine operator, NexGen Energy Partners LLC, expired last year, Bring said.
The new owners did not want to renew the contract so the turbine was decommissioned, the mayor said. It supplied about 15 percent of the electricity needed for the store, he added.