Enfield Square Mall closed after sprinklers freeze, burst
ENFIELD, Conn. — Heating and sprinkler contractors worked Thursday at the mostly abandoned and now temporarily closed Enfield Square Mall.
Owners and the town don’t have a timeline for when the mall and its remaining businesses will reopen.
“It’s a lot of logistics. A lot of work to organize,” said Dave Roy, an employee of property owner Namdar Realty.
The Target store is under different ownership and has a sprinkler system that’s separate from the rest of the mall, said Raymond Steadward, chief building officer for the town.
A security guard staffs the entrance of the Enfield Square Mall on Thursday to ensure that customers do not enter. Target, which is attached to the main building, is still open. (Douglas Hook / The Republican)Douglas Hook
“The rest of the mall doesn’t have any sprinklers and is not safe,” he said.
The mall’s sprinkler pipes froze and burst Saturday, as the region plunged into a cold spell, Steadward said.
An alarm on the sprinklers sensed the flow of water and summoned firefighters Saturday. They arrived to find burst pipes and a sprinkler room in which the temperature had fallen to 27 degrees.
The official notice that Steadward sent Monday to Namdar said there are also missing ceiling tiles and part of the ceiling assembly in the long-unused Cinemark movie theater.
In the letter, Steadward said the fire alarm system appears not to be working and is overdue for its annual inspection, as well.
He said all the repairs will have to be re-inspected and approved before the mall can reopen.
In 2023, the town and Thompsonville Fire Department threatened to shut the mall down — all of it, including Target — after the fire alarm and sprinkler systems were damaged by rain through a hole in the roof of the old Macy’s department store.
The Enfield Square Mall has closed because of water pipe damage caused by freezing temperatures. This includes a burst sprinkler head inside a vacant tenant space. Target, which is attached to the mall, is still open to the public. (Douglas Hook / The Republican)Douglas Hook
Since then, potential new owners Woodsonia Real Estate Inc. and Landmark Property Development have proposed razing most of the mall and replacing it with Enfield Marketplace.
Enfield Marketplace would be a $250 million development, totaling 165,000 square feet of new retail, hotels and about 450 units of housing.
But the project is still in the planning process. Woodsonia didn’t return calls and emails Thursday.
Enfield Square opened in 1971 with G. Fox & Co., Steiger’s and JCPenney as anchors.
Macy’s closed in 2016, but craft fairs leased out the space for a few years until the roof broke open.
The Sears store closed in 2017, and JCPenney closed in 2000.
Besides Target, the mall was down to just a few merchants. There was a kabob restaurant, a tea shop, a karate dojo and The Dionysus Theatre Company.
Dionysus, an amateur troupe dependent on ticket sales, established its 60-seat black-box theater in a former shoe store 18 months ago after 10 years in Vernon’s Arts Center East and a year in Tolland.
Gabbi Mendelsohn, artistic director of Dionysus, said the troupe is rehearsing its next show at another location.
But she plans return to the mall and stage “Stuped (Expletive) Bird,” which is “sort of adopted from ‘The Seagull’ by Anton Chekhov.”
Opening night is March 13. She is directing.
“We are still excited and getting everything ready for that March show,” Mendelsohn said in a phone interview. “I know the challenge for the mall has been that the word got out of the sale. It was called a dead mall. The stores that depended on foot traffic all closed.”
On Thursday, town-issued orange warning signs were still up at mall entrances, and the mall was gated off from the Target. A few workers came and went, including people disassembling and removing retail kiosks.
The noon-hour shopping crowd at Target showed little curiosity about the rest of the mall.
Stories by Jim Kinney
Read the original article on MassLive . Add MassLive as a Preferred Source by clicking here .
