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From Rubble to Riches?
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Business New Haven
9/16/2002
By: BNH
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ORANGE - On a bitter cold February evening more than four years ago, a fire ravaged through an Orange strip plaza. This summer, on a sultry August night, crowds of people gathered at Dip Top ice cream, one of two surviving buildings on the property that burned.
By next summer, a handful of high-end retail shops will have taken the place of what has become a Post Road eyesore, if all goes according to plan at Colonial Properties Inc.
Locals may have to find their favorite ice cream someplace else. Colonial Properties bought the property at the five corners intersection of Racebrook, Old Tavern and the Boston Post Road, and the town has approved a strip plaza to be constructed on the site that houses Dip Top ice cream.
Proprietors of businesses between Dip Top and the still-standing building that burned in the winter of 1998, as well as Orange First Selectman Mitchell Goldblatt, are pleased with the plans.
“The main thing is getting that piece of property back in shape,” explains Goldblatt. “It's become somewhat of an eyesore over the past couple of years.
“There have been on-and-off concerns about what is happening with that spot,” Goldblatt adds. “It's been subject to a lot of conversations because it is so visible. There seems to be much more confidence that the plans that were approved [last month] by the zoning board will actually go forward and revitalize that area and put a nice new building in there.”
The fire was four years ago and even though a number of different plans for how to reconstruct the plaza have gone before the town's planning and zoning commission, none to date have advanced beyond the talking stage.
Gary Richetelli, vice president of Colonial Properties, expects construction to start next month and wrap up next summer. After Dip Top closes in November for the winter season, the ice cream stand will be demolished. A new ice cream parlor is included in the plans, but Dip Top's owners have not decided whether they'll move into the new space or set up shop elsewhere.
“We are talking with Dip Top to see if they want to remain in the building,” Richetelli says. “They have indicated interest in remaining there, so we are trying to accommodate them.” The new ice cream shop would be more of an ice cream parlor as opposed to the walk-up window that exists today.
The footprint of the new Crossroads Plaza retail center will look similar to the property that burned down. It will house about a half-dozen high-end niche retailers in spaces ranging from 600 to 2,400-square-feet. There will be parking spaces for roughly 40 cars around the building.
Richetelli envisions that businesses such pastry and coffee shops, clothing retailers, and perhaps a ladies' shoe store might be interested in the property.
Indeed, interest in the project is growing, Richetelli says, but it's too soon in the process to start shopping for tenants. He anticipates retail space in the building will be a hot sale.
“Seeing is believing,” he says. “Now it's a run-down, burned-out property. You just have to use your imagination.”
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