AMHERST, N.Y. — A large retail tenant could be joining the development project known as Station Twelve at the former Northtown Plaza in Amherst.
The retailer could be the spark needed to kick start delayed construction.
Station Twelve developers WS Development broke ground on the retail and restaurant space in November of 2019. Since then, not much movement has been made on the property. Construction was halted in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The tenants of the 333,000-square-foot lifestyle center would include Williams-Sonoma, L.L. Bean, Banana Republic, Pottery Barn, West Elm, Athleta, City Works, B.Good and Public Espresso & Coffee.
The COVID-19 pandemic rocked the retail world causing the project to be put on hold.
"Many of the retailers started to pause and cause construction to pause for the most part on that site," Town of Amherst supervisor Brian Kulpa said.
However, nearly a year later, interest from what's being described as a large retail tenant is bringing new attention to the project.
"We've been briefed that WS was in final negotiations with a large national retailer with a big online presence," Kulpa said.
This is a three-phase development project. Phase 1 was building the anchor Whole Foods in 2017, phase 2 is creating the lifestyle retail and restaurant space, and phase 3 could involve this undisclosed national retailer to the east of Whole Foods.
"Their expectations would be if those negotiations work out well for the rest of this month, they would be in the ground trying again for construction this spring," Kulpa continued.
Added Amherst Chamber of Commerce president AJ Baynes: "A lot of these big retailers are publicly traded companies so it takes a little while to set a course of how many stores they want to open in a year, and it's encouraging to hear that Western New York is one of those places where they want to develop and grow their business."
2 On Your Side reached out to WS Development multiple times for more information about the project but we did not hear back.