Fifteen years ago, the Steeplegate Mall was the largest taxpayer in the city, a position it had held for more than a decade. Its assessed value approached $72 million at its peak in 2010.
Today, the mall is assessed at a fraction of that value at $12.6 million – around a sixth of its previous worth – and doesn’t rank in the top ten city taxpayers.
Bringing in new, popular grocery chains and building multiple mixed-use apartment buildings was the kind of economic growth that got city leaders and the public excited. Beyond the allure of a Costco or Whole Foods in central New Hampshire, the project promised a windfall for city coffers and housing supply.
For the last year, the Concord City Council has held closed-door negotiations with the developer, Onyx Partners Ltd., about some kind of public investment in the project. The talks were slow-moving but ongoing when fencing around the mall, set up ahead of a planned demolition, was removed. Signs went up offering the existing retail space for rent — a clear signal that the developer had moved away from its ambitious redevelopment plans for the property.
“That was always something Onyx has held out there,” Mayor Byron Champlin said Thursday, “that they’d have to fall back on leasing retail.”
Champlin said he doesn’t know what the developer’s plan is for the mall in the long term.
“I don’t think the highest best use of that property is to continue as a decrepit mall,” he said. “I was hoping this would add to the tax base.”
City leaders have pointed to a need for major, commercial projects to alleviate growing tax pressure on homeowners. Concord’s net citywide property value was effectively flat last year.
The city council approved a major sewer improvement on the Heights to better serve existing residents and accommodate growth, including a Steeplegate redevelopment.
Negotiations between the city and the developer included a third-party report that evaluated the project’s finances.
Onyx was asking for further direct investment from the city – such as road construction or greenspace development, according to multiple members of the city council.
“Onyx indicated to us that some of their major tenants and investors wanted to see that the city was supportive of the project… through direct infrastructure investments,” Champlin said.
A copy of the report and other records related to negotiations are being withheld by city officials, citing a portion of the Right-to-Know law that allows the shielding of “confidential, commercial or financial information.” Before that, the city justified holding these conversations out of the public because it considered them real estate negotiations. The law is meant to provide the “greatest possible public access to the actions, discussions and records of all public bodies, and their accountability to the people.”
Councilors said they weren’t in favor of picking up the tab on improvements the developer would have otherwise paid for, but other options were on the table.
“There was a reluctance to offer too much,” At-large councilor Fred Keach said. Councilors were struggling to strike a balance between attracting new investment and asking taxpayers to front the money and wait for tax base expansion later.
“It needs to be done right or not done,” Keach said.
The report found that the developer was asking for more than it needed from the city, councilors said.
“The report basically said that Onyx was asking for too much,” Champlin said. “We took that seriously, tried to get a more reasonable ask… but it never came.”
Champlin and others said they were open to a tax increment financing district, a tool that helped fuel the Merchants Way development at Exit 17.
However, city officials said their negotiations didn’t scuttle the project.
As Champlin put it, a lease with current tenant JCPenney was a “poison pill” on Onyx’s proposal.
Representatives for JCPenney did not respond to requests for comment.
Onyx’s plan to build multiple large apartment buildings was a keystone of the city’s housing pipeline.
Concord added 233 net units of housing to its supply between 2010 and 2020, per census data. It would need to add around ten times that number by 2030, according the Central New Hampshire Regional Planning Commission’s 2023 Regional Housing Needs Assessment.
Concord has made some gains on new housing in the last few years with around 400 units completed since the spring of 2024, and another 225 or so under construction or nearly complete, per city records. But many of the largest projects in the works are slow-moving or stalled.
Concord isn’t alone in falling short of what experts say its housing needs are, for the present and the future. The mall project offered a major step towards meeting those goals.
“I’m still hopeful something transformative can happen at that property,” Champlin said. “It may not be in my lifetime.”