Plans to redevelop the former Boston Store at Brookfield Square Mall have been updated to include medical offices, new retail and restaurant spaces and community gathering space.
Wauwatosa-based commercial real estate firm
Irgens purchased the 16-acre site in 2021, after Boston Store's parent company went out of business in 2018 and the property went to the auction block, and has since worked through several redevelopment plans.
The firm hopes to break ground on its new $50 million proposal this fall, according to
Andrea Mullins, Irgens' vice president of development, who presented the most recent plans at a Thursday event sponsored by the
Commercial Association of Realtors Wisconsin.
The site, located at 15875 W. Bluemound Road, was home to the Boston Store for nearly 60 years
before its recent demolition.
A 45,000-square-foot, two-story medical office building could be built on the western end of the site. Irgens has interest from tenants already, Mullins said, and the company plans to pre-lease a portion of the building before beginning construction.
"We have another medical office building a mile down the road in The Corridor, which we also developed, ...and for the rest of the product up and down Bluemound, there's no newer medical office space."
The site's eastern end would be redeveloped with a pair of 14,000-square-foot retail buildings, which would be filled with a mix of tenants.
"Retail was a huge black eye, if you will, in the industry for many, many years, 10 years ago," Mullins said. "'Why are you doing retail? It's dead. It's all gone online,' people said. Well, the unfortunate result of that is nothing was built right for 10 plus years and now there's a lack of quality retail space."
Mullins said the medical office building and two retail buildings would likely be the project's first phase.
The space closest to the mall's new entrance will be redeveloped with a new restaurant space and a greenspace, which could include a band shell and beer garden.
"For the restaurant, we're really hoping to get a local restauranteur and have a new concept to market, brewery type restaurant or something with a neat outdoor patio," Mullins said, adding that the company is in negotiations with a tenant.
The northern end of the site could be redeveloped with standalone retail space, though that portion of the development is in earlier stages, according to Mullins.
Irgens previously proposed denser redevelopment
Mullins said that much of the company's work on this project since purchasing the property has been renegotiating and removing easement, restriction and operating agreements that were put in place on most mall properties decades ago, before mall owners could predict the decline of regional shopping malls and the need for redevelopment.
"What the agreements does is basically provide rules and guidelines of how you do literally everything at a mall: how it's managed, how it's operated, what signage you're allowed, what use you're allowed, how dense you can do it, what you can do for development, where you can build, who pays for what and how that's all shared," Mullins said. "It's a very big, long, complicated agreement."
Redevelopment of Southridge Mall's former Boston Store has run into a similar problem.
In 2022,
Irgens proposed a denser project at Brookfield Square that included a five-story hotel, a five-story apartment building and office buildings.
"(At that time) we were still very positive on changing those agreements fully and getting rid of them, and that just isn't happening," Mullins said, adding that buildings at this site need to be capped at three stories, which made apartment buildings a less appealing option.
