What happened?
The township received a letter from Patrick Kejs, senior vice president with Regency Centers, last week canceling the sales contract to purchase the old Activity Center. There are no details about why the transaction was terminated.
What was planned?
Kroger had agreed to pay the township $1.8 million for the center on Cox Road to clear the way for a 117,166-square-foot Marketplace. The deal was contingent on Regency being able to also purchase the Providence Bible Fellowship church and property from Chesterwood Village.
Could the project still happen?
West Chester Twp. Trustee Mark Welch said he spoke with Ryan Ertel, senior leasing agent at Regency who has been handling the deal, on Tuesday and was told the crux of the problem might be the lease agreement with Kroger, but the whole deal isn’t completely over.
“When I talked to Ryan he said, ‘Look, I am still working on this,’” Welch told the Journal-News. “He said, ‘I don’t want to hold up the land or do anything like that while we’re trying to work through this.’ He said basically Kroger is choking over the lease price.”
What happens to the senior center?
The Activity Center sale was initiated by the end of the lease with Community First Solutions last December. The non-profit ran the senior programming and other activities in the building for years. Those programs are now run out of the MidPointe Library.
Welch said if the Kroger deal is truly undone the township will likely attempt to sell the Activity Center again.
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