Broker Will Market BellCrest to Local, National Retailers

When driving down Fischer Boulevard in Toms River, it’s hard to miss the mostly-vacant .

Empty storefronts, darkened windows are very visible from the street, and the merchants that are still in the shopping center – a Burger King, nail salon, UMI Sushi & Hibachi, Chicken Town, Buma’s Bubbles, Muscle Maker Grill and Planet Fitness – say they have already lost customers, and fear their sales will continue dropping.

But landlord s maintains its commitment to the plaza, and even earlier this month announced it signed Fameco Real Estate to reposition and re-tenant the shopping center. Hovnanian said it hopes to not only fill the anchor tenant spots, but also fill all the vacancies in the plaza.

“We are marketing to, and searching for, an anchor tenant or tenants to replace the former 53,300-square-foot Foodtown, which unexpectedly vacated Bellcrest in 2010,” said Steven K. Winters, a sales associate at Fameco.

Winters said the company is searching for convenience/service-oriented anchors, as well as complementary satellite tenants to fill the smaller units ranging in size from 600 to 14,000 square feet of space.

Anchor store vacated BellCrest in June 2010, and Blockbuster moved out shortly thereafter. The Fischer Boulevard location of Blockbuster was part of a company-wide closing of 1,000 sites, but the closing left the remaining tenants in the center questioning the future of the site, and whether they would re-sign their leases at the end of their term.

Fameco is currently advertising eight available spaces at BellCrest on its website, with a negotiable rental rate for each slot.

While Winters said no one has yet signed on to lease space at BellCrest, he said he also couldn’t name any potential future tenants at this time.

“We’ve had some initial interest, but we are now just getting started,” he said. “Most everyone involved in retail real estate – landlords, brokers, tenants and other professionals – are members of the International Council of Shopping Centers, and our national convention is in Las Vegas in May, where we expect to meet with several tenants. Hopefully that will yield some results, but the process of securing tenants can sometimes take many months.”