Halpern Enterprises Talks About Plans for Belmont Hills

The developer for Belmont Hills cautiously confirmed what —there could be some new plans for the mixed use development announced in the coming months.

“We’re in the beginning process of moving forward with our Belmont project,” said Steve West, Halpern Enterprise’s vice president of development. “The first step of that was to meet with city leaders and talk about zoning because that was something we needed to change some of. We met with them to try to determine if they thought our possible changes were something they would support. That was a very early step in the process.”

Belmont Hills, located at the corner of Atlanta and Windy Hill roads, is currently zoned for a mixed use development. West said that wouldn’t change, but they’re looking to “rearrange” some things within the site. At this time, he said he couldn’t offer specifics about the site.

“We really don’t want to get the cart ahead of the horse and announce things and find that something prevents that from happening like we had hoped,” West said.

He added that Halpern is working hard on the project, but that Bacon’s 30-day estimate was a little optimistic.

“I want to finish our diligence here,” he said. “I know the mayor had announced at some point last week, but I don’t know if we’ll be able to make it in 30 days. We’ve got a lot of work to do and we’re working hard to try to get there.”

The Belmont Hills project has been in the works for several years. In 2008, the city approved a development agreement with Halpern Enterprises for a $250 million mixed-use redevelopment of the former Belmont Hills shopping center at the corner of Atlanta and Windy Hill Roads. However, the market had other plans.

“The reason the project was put on hold wasn’t our inability to have funding,” West said. “It was really due to changes in the market, the weakness in the economy and changes in the market value of what could be built. So even though we had funds available to build something the changes in the market would make it not able to be successful. Due to that we made the decision to put the property on hold and keep it on hold till the market decisions improved so we could do the development and it would be viable when we built it.”

Now four years later, West said they’re ready with new ideas.

“We’re committed to the site and committed to doing the right thing there,” he said. “Things change and we felt like it made sense to take a step back and be the best thing to move forward when the economy would be there and we hope that that’s very soon.”

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