Inserting auto repair into a town center

The first four commercial tenants have been selected for Storrs Center, a mixed-use center now under construction across a road from the main campus of the University of Connecticut. The biggest surprise, for those watching the project from a distance, is that one of the businesses is an auto repair shop — perhaps the first auto repair facility ever placed in a new urban town center.

“We had a unique situation here because there was an existing auto repair shop within the footprint of the project,” explains Macon Toledano, vice president of master developer LeylandAlliance, which is building Storrs Center in collaboration with the Mansfield Downtown Partnership. Rene Schein has owned and operated Storrs Automotive since 1975, and she wanted to stay. The development team and the public thought it made sense to include an establishment where people could drop off their cars for servicing and walk to the university or other destinations, says Toledano.

To fit auto repair into a pedestrian-oriented center, the shop will occupy a small, pitched-roof building topped by a cupola, which will be attached by a breezeway to the back of one of the center’s main four-story, mixed-use buildings. The shop will effectively be a bookend for a rear parking and delivery area, partly concealing a view of pavement.

“The challenge was  primarily in getting all of the approvals from the state and the town for the inclusion of the auto repair shop use in the list of allowable uses in the project area,” he said. The town center was organized under a state-approved Municipal Development Plan (MDP). Apparently for environmental reasons, auto repair shops and gas stations are prohibited in such plans unless they are pre-existing uses. The project area includes 24 acres of conservation land that will be given to the Town of Mansfield.

The other three initial commercial tenants will be a physical therapy business, a self-serve frozen yogurt lounge, and a café with indoor and outdoor seating, A number of other businesses, including the UConn Co-op, which intends to operate a general bookstore in the project, have signed letters of intent to be in the 17-acre center.

The project’s first building was topped off Nov. 17. The first phase, including 127 rental apartments and approximately 25,000 sq. ft. of retail, restaurant, and commercial space, is scheduled to open in August.

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