Maple Tree Place in Williston sells to New York-based real estate company for $77 million

WILLISTON ― Maple Tree Place in Williston has a new owner.

Acadia Realty Trust, based in Rye, New York, paid $77 million in December for the 64-acre property, which is $13 million less than it last sold for in August 2016, when Dallas-based Cypress Equities paid $90 million.

Matt Boulanger, Williston's planning director and zoning administrator, said it did not go unnoticed by the Williston Selectboard that Maple Tree Place sold for less than it did eight years ago, and less than its assessed value of $83.5 million.

"It's budget season," Boulanger said. "When you're predicting Fiscal Year 2025 revenue, and you're losing several million dollars worth of grand list value from somewhere on your balance sheet, that can have an impact."

Boulanger noted that "most of Taft Corners was built before most people were buying things on Amazon."

"How do you as a municipality think about how you might respond to that?" Boulanger said. "To the extent we control rules for land development, (we need to be) making sure those rules encourage adaptive reuse of those (retail) sites or infill on those sites."

John McMahon, listed on Acadia Realty Trust's website as the contact for Maple Tree Place, declined Thursday to give any details on Acadia's plans for the prominent property.

"I hope you'll see some improvements, but otherwise I can't comment," McMahon said.

Williston's form-based code creates opportunities for further development at Maple Tree Place

The new form-based zoning Williston adopted in October 2022 for the Taft Corners Growth Center − a state designation intended to encourage development − includes Maple Tree Place, according to Boulanger. He said the designation creates opportunity for the property.

"Changes to our zoning in the last couple of years have opened up quite a lot more (potential for) infill development for properties like Maple Tree Place," Boulanger said. "There is development potential wherever there's any street frontage and there's lots of street frontage in Maple Tree Place."

Boulanger said he noticed there were "folks working on behalf of Acadia doing file research for a couple of months before the announcement of the sale."

"We got the impression something was cooking," he said.

More:A tale of many proposed malls: Looking back at contested development in Taft Corners

Acadia Realty Trust also owns the Gateway Shopping Center in South Burlington, which has a Shaw's Supermarket, Dollar Tree, Starbucks, Chipotle restaurant and other businesses. Maple Tree Place has a Shaw's Supermarket as well, plus Old Navy, Dick's Sporting Goods, Best Buy, Ulta, Orange Theory, Starbucks and others, including restaurants and a movie theater.

All told, Acadia Realty Trust owns more than 190 properties in 22 states and the District of Columbia, including City Point Brooklyn, the largest food, shopping and entertainment destination in the borough, according to the Acadia website.

Planning director remembers the 'wild time' at Maple Tree Place

Boulanger refers to the period Maple Tree Place was owned by Cypress Equities as a "wild time."

"They had some interesting proposals to do things like adding a skating rink and splash pad to the middle of the green and painting most of the buildings white," Boulanger said. "These guys would come up from somewhere in Texas with VR goggles to show us what they would do."

Williston has since added regulations that would prevent developers from painting brick buildings.

"Let's let architecture be what it is," Boulanger said.

More:No more box stores: Proposed zoning code would drastically change Williston's Taft Corners

History of Maple Tree Place dates back to 1976 and the battle over a proposed mall

The history of development at the site of Maple Tree Place dates back to 1976, when Pyramid Co., based in Syracuse, New York, began drawing up plans to build an 80-store shopping mall that would have been the largest retail development ever proposed in Vermont. The locals were not amused. A decade-long battle ensued, which ultimately saw the project killed by Vermont's Act 250 law, which governs large developments in the state.

Regrouping, Pyramid involved a local developer, who finally got a design approved that became Maple Tree Place, with construction beginning in September 2001, 25 years after Pyramid first began planning its mega-mall.

Starwood Ceruzzi, a Fairfield, Connecticut-based management firm, took over the project in September 1999, two years before construction began, selling the finished property to Inland U.S. Management, based in Oak Brook, Illinois, in June 2005 for $103 million, according to the Williston Observer − $26 million more than Maple Tree Place sold for 18 years later.

Contact Dan D’Ambrosio at 660-1841 or ddambrosi@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @DanDambrosioVT. This coverage is only possible with support from our readers.