Bedford, NH – The landmark Bedford Mall has begun major reconstruction that will be substantially complete by late 2011. The mall, located along the South River Road retail corridor (US Route 3) in Bedford, NH, has continually served the greater Bedford and Manchester communities since it opened in 1963. In recent years, the mall had struggled with increased vacancy as many retailers relocated to newer shopping centers and malls. Emmes Asset Management Company
LLC bought the ailing property in 2007 with redevelopment in mind. Over the coming year, the property will be rebuilt into a modern shopping destination anchored by new anchor tenant, Kohl’s, and existing anchor tenants Bob’s, Marshalls, and Staples.
Covering approximately 21 acres, the property presently includes a 300,000 sf enclosed mall and an Outback Steakhouse. Current tenants, Bob’s Stores, Marshalls, Staples, K Milan Salon, Michael’s School of Hair Design and Key Nails will stay at the property and remain open during construction. Kohl’s and many yet to be determined inline and anchor tenants will take the place of well-known past tenants which once included WT Grant, Alexander’s Supermarket, Montgomery Ward, CVS, Papa Gino’s, Linens N’ Things, Regal Cinema, and many others. Upon completion of the redevelopment, there will be spaces available that range in size from 1,200 to 25,000 sf.
Construction began in November 2010 on both a new building for Staples and a major renovation of the existing structure (previously occupied by the Linen’s N Things) for Marshalls. The project also includes two new buildings along South River Road (Route 3). In the northwest corner, between Outback and Staples, an 8,400 sf retail building is under construction and will be occupied by either a single tenant or several smaller tenants.
The project’s architect and owner worked closely with the town planner and planning board to make sure the property would fit architecturally within the greater Bedford Community. In addition to the architecture, a major source of concern was stormwater management. The existing site is almost entirely comprised of pavement and buildings, with no modern stormwater treatment because of the property’s age. In order to obtain a state stormwater permit, civil engineers, at TFMoran Inc. worked closely with the NHDES (New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services) to develop a combination of bio-retention swales, tree filters, and mechanical treatment measures to treat nearly all of the stormwater runoff from the site at a reasonable cost. This system will benefit and help preserve the health of the local watershed.
“These innovative stormwater initiatives will appear to most people as traditional landscaped islands, but looks are deceiving”, says Anne Cruess, ASLA, the landscape architect from TFMoran. “Almost all the landscaping within the parking areas serve the dual purpose of stormwater management and beautification. The plantings were chosen to tolerate both innundation and drought conditions—a challenge that most landscape plants are not up to.”
The “tree box filter” is a mini bio-retention system that combines the drainage storage of a catch basin with vegetated filtration for water quality treatment. Essentially, runoff from the parking lot will be collected in the tree box filters, detained, filtered and recharged back to the groundwater. There will be 65 tree box filters when the renovations are complete. Several species of trees were used for the filters, including Cherry, Birch, Sycamore and Maple—all of
which were chosen for their hardiness and ability to survive in a harsh environment.
Likewise, the bioretention swales within the parking lot will function in the same manner as the tree box filters, but the swales are unstructured and will contain mostly shrubs. Breaks in the pavement will channel runoff and collect in the swales where it will percolate through a special soil mixture and be absorbed into the ground water. Traditional landscape design elements, such as color, shape, texture, and scale will have an added dimension” says Cruess, “We will now be
designing for water quality as well as aesthetics”.
