Danbury Fair Mall hosts summer pop-ups with local businesses

BY JUSTIN MCGOWN jmcgown@westfairinc.com

Throughout this summer and into the autumn, the Danbury Fair Mall will partner with All Things and More Pop-Up Boutiques to host a series of pop-up events featuring local small businesses.

The first event was held on July 1 and featured vendors from across Fairfield County and surrounding areas who sold goods ranging from jewelry to fresh popcorn and handmade soaps on the first floor of the mall.

“Danbury Fair has historically been a site where we try to do events and activities in the mall to activate local operators,” said Maura Ruby, the general manager of the mall. “This pop-up concept is something that we really focus on to elevate brands that are really local or home-grown businesses, giving them an opportunity to get visibility in a premier regional town center. It also provides us with an opportunity to entertain our customers with different and creative uses.”

According to Ruby, the pop-ups are a powerful tool for providing new experiences to visitors while also enabling the mall to highlight its worth to potential new tenants. It also presented an opportunity for cross promotion, with the mall showcasing small businesses offering unique products while those businesses were able to draw their dedicated base to the mall.

“Everything is so easy,” said Sueli Modes of Pure by Sue as customers perused her hand-made soaps. “I was here last year, and it was a great experience for me. I’m surrounded by great people here.”

Also appreciative of the exposure was Rose Correa, founder of the cosmetics vendor Amazonian SkinFood.

“I know there is a huge Brazilian community in this area, and I’m more on the coast so I thought it was really great to get my message to more Brazilians because they know these ingredients, and this is also the community that we help with the profits from our products,” said Correa.

Building community is also a primary focus of All Things and More, the chief organizers of the pop-up series. Kristine Rodriguez, a co-owner at All Things and More Pop-Up, said that a key part of building up for the events is using their own social media to promote the events involved businesses while encouraging organic cross promotion.

“We create a group chat with all the vendors that are participating,” Rodriguez said. “Our goal is creating a community with small businesses, allowing them to expose their brands and feel comfortable to come up and ask questions like ‘how do I register my business?’ We want to create a community of different small businesses so that they can network with each other and learn from each other.”

Rodriguez and her co-founder Natalia

Santana both have businesses of their own, but they launched All Things and More after organizing a handful of popup events and realizing that they were both increasingly popular with the public and in demand among the many people launching businesses in recent years.

Vendor participation in the Danbury Mall events only requires a $125 fee, and the vendors who are accepted receive a day in a prime location with logistical support, along with flyers and a social media blitz. Their products then appear alongside a curated group of vendors, selected by Santana and Rodriguez to avoid overlapping offerings.

Rodriguez said that they have grander ambitions for future events as well.

“The biggest event we’ve had was close to 30, and that’s our goal for the mall,” she stated. “We want to basically take over the lower level all the way across, we want to have enough vendors where we can reach the other side of the mall.”

The special permit would allow for the third phase of the Brookfield Commons project to move forward. Brookfield Commons is a joint venture of the White Plains Housing Authority and Trinity Financial at the 9.3-acre site of the Winbrook Houses public housing development. It was conceived to replace the aging five apartment buildings in Winbrook.

The second phase of the redevelopment was completed in April of last year with the opening of a new 9-story building with 129 apartments. The $64 million building has been named “The Overture.” The first Brookfield Commons phase was completed in 2016 and has 103 affordable apartments in a 9-story building that cost $42 million. The third building would be in an “L” shape with an 11-story section and a 9-story section and contain 174 apartments.

Thomas Brown, vice president of development for Trinity, told the Business Journals that it’s expected that the third building would cost approximately $100 million.

“We’re very happy with the progress. We’re really enjoying our partnership with the Housing Authority and the residents and the City of White Plains,” Brown said. “Our philosophy is to maximize the amount of affordable housing. We know how important high-quality, affordable housing is. We also want to build strong communities.”

Brown said that the architecture of the building and equipping of the apartments will be on a par with the other development that is taking place in White Plains.

“We believe that there should be no difference in he quality of an affordable housing unit and a market-rate unit,” Brown said. “We fell that our residents deserve the same level of quality as residents n market-rate buildings. The new residents who come into our community really appreciate that.”

Brown indicated that while the Brookfield Commons concept called for replacing the five original Winbrook buildings, there may ultimately be a sixth building as part of Brookfield Commons.

“We’re still working through the master plan for the site, but it could be five or six and the project also is going to include green space,” Brown said. “This is in line with what we’ve developed in our projects up and down the Northeast Corridor.”

For White Plains Mayor Tom Roach, the opening of The Halden and the progress made in the Brookfield Commons development are fresh signs of the city’s success in bringing in a variety of housing developments that include Gateway II that is under construction on Hamilton Avenue near the Metro-North station, The Mitchell that recently opened, Hamilton Green on the site of the former White Plains Mall, the anticipated redevelopment of The Galleria site, conversion and new construction at the former AT&T site at 440 Hamilton Ave., and a workforce housing project planned for 8 Chester Ave.

“You don’t get these projects unless you have a city that is attractive to people: they want to live here, shop here, businesses want to locate here,” Roach told the Business Journals. “We are constantly focusing on the next step, how to we make things better. I think it’s paying off. The variety of projects that we have happening here right now is pretty astounding. We are leading the way on affordable housing so we are incorporating that into all of these projects.”

Roach said that his experience during a lifetime of familiarity with White Plains is that people from all economic strata have been welcome and as mayor he’s been working to ensure that continues.

“A federal housing rolled out in the 40s and 50s it created islands,” Roach said in describing the often isolated public housing from those days. “They were very stark, not architecturally friendly. Everyone is entitled to wake up in a place that’s safe and clean and that they’re proud to call home.”

The Halden is a three-building complex that was built on an approximately 20-acre section of the RPW Group’s 70-acre office park at 1133 Westchester Ave. by RPW and Cleveland-based The NRP Group. Jonathan Gertman, senior vice president of development for NRP, said that the complex already was approximately 50% leased as of the official opening.

The Halden features a mix of 178 one-bedroom apartments, 115 two-bedroom and 10 three-bedroom apartments. Nineteen of the units are priced in the affordable category for people making 60% of the Westchester Area Median Income.

At the opening day ceremony, Gertman expressed what he termed “deep pride and satisfaction” with the way the construction went. He also recalled that the Covid pandemic impacted the construction timeline when New York state imposed restrictions on various business activities.

“We worked socially distanced, we had supply chain issues,” Gertman said. “We had a 400% spike in lumber costs. In the end, that is not going to be the story of The Halden. To me, the indelible takeaway of this project is working together to do something significant and worthy under challenging circumstances.”

Gertman said that when the city created an overlay zone to allow new uses at office park sites, it laid the groundwork for the project. He also said that the support of the Westchester County Industrial Development Agency was vital to making the project happen.

Roach said that years ago city leaders saw an issue developing with corporate parks along I-287 and in other parts of the county and that more flexibility was called for in deciding what could and could not be done at those properties.

“That’s when the overlay came up, that’s when it was put in place, and this is a great example of what we had in mind,” Roach said. Roach said that he foresees people living at The Halden who will walk across the parking lot to their jobs in the 1133 office building.