The last we heard, way back when, a brewery was being planned for one of the vacant portions of the former Summit Park Mall, currently languishing in Wheatfield.
It’s actually been a while since anyone has discussed plans for the largely vacant building, which is currently home to Niagara International Sports & Entertainment.
Announced in 2017, plans for the brewery involved transforming the former Toys ‘ R ‘ Us unit into Big Thunder Brewing Co. A year later, town officials were doubtful the plan would ever come to fruition.
It’s always seemed a shame to us that some use for the Summit Park Mall site hasn’t been found. It’s been more than 15 years since most of the mall shut its doors in 2009. Sure, we know that the malls we used to know and love are becoming rarer by the year, but you can’t help but shake your head when you’re confronted with the largely vacant structure as you drive down Williams Road. It’s in a great location at the end of the LaSalle Expressway and easily accessible by Niagara Falls Boulevard.
We were happy to see Niagara International Sports & Entertainment arrive and continue on at the site and if you didn’t know, 7 Gates Screampark, located nearby, is set to open next month. But there’s still a lot of vacant space left over.
Late last week, we were alerted to new potential plans for the mall and it has nothing to do with retail. Damian Parker, the CEO of e-commerce platform Premier Streets, wants to bring a data center to the site.
His idea, proposed to the Wheatfield Planning Board in May, would start with 2,000 square feet inside the former Bon-Ton store on the property’s southern end.
“We’re trying to see if we can reuse it to do data storage,” Parker said. He said mall property owner Zoran Cocov is looking for ways to reuse parts of the vacant mall property.
He told the planning board this month that Bloom Energy Servers and batteries would be used to help power the center and the noise levels would be at around 55 decibels. How loud’s that, you ask — according to Decibelpro.app: “55 dB is a level that describes moderate to soft sounds. In fact, it is comparable to a quiet home environment, a residential street, or a normal conversation between two people.”
The good news for Parker, according to the town building inspector, is that data centers are considered commercial storage and are allowed to operate in commercially-zoned areas of the town, which the former Summit Park Mall is in. Town code does not allow cryptocurrency mining.
We’ve always thought you’d need to think outside the box in reimagining the former mall’s future. Could a data center be the answer? We’re not sure but we’re early in the process and eager to see what comes next.
There’s still a ways to go. We haven’t even seen a proper site plan for the potential project and a public hearing would need to be scheduled before a special use permit could be granted by the town. We’re sure there’ll be a lot of scrutiny of the project, considering the residential areas to the east and west of the mall.
Time will tell if this latest effort to resurrect at least a portion of the mall is successful.