Amazon is under contract to buy 26 acres of Sunrise Mall property, which the owner is seeking to subdivide.
That is what an official with Sunrise Mall Holdings LLC, which bought the long-struggling Massapequa mall in 2020, told the Nassau County Planning Commission during a work session that started at about 9 a.m. Thursday morning.
The planning commission now is holding a public hearing, which began at 10:05 a.m., on Sunrise Mall Holding’s request to subdivide about 67 acres of the 77-acre mall into four parcels.
The application for a subdivision is seeking to subdivide the land into four parcels — 32.3 acres, 26.7 acres, 5.56 acres and 2.52 acres.
No development will take place on the two small parcels, and no plans have been made for the largest parcel, said Jeffrey S. Mooallem, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Urban Edge Properties, a Manhattan-based real estate investment trust that is the managing member of Sunrise Mall Holdings.
He said he didn’t know what Amazon planned to do with the land it is under contract to buy.
Amazon did not respond to several Newsday inquiries in April about whether it had plans to lease or buy any of the mall property.
Sunrise Mall Holdings plans to demolish the mall, including the freestanding former Sears Auto Center, according to a letter the partnership’s attorney, Judy Lynn Simoncic of Uniondale law firm Forchelli Deegan Terrana LLP, sent to the Town of Oyster Bay Planning and Development Department.
Dated April 2, the letter requests that the department send a zoning compliance letter to the county planning commission as part of the requirements to get the subdivision approved. Sunrise Mall is in the town’s light industrial district.
At the planning commission’s work session Thursday, Simoncic said it would be years before a demolition of the mall would occur.
Built in 1973, the 1.2 million-square-foot mall used to be a bustling property but, like many malls across the country, it has lost stores over the last decade due to a growing number of retailers online. The COVID-19 pandemic, which started in March 2020, exacerbated the challenges faced by shopping malls.
Sunrise Mall Holdings stopped renewing tenant leases in 2022.
The only tenant left in the mall is Dick’s Sporting Goods.
Check back for updates to this developing story.