It's not entirely clear what happens next when the lights go out this fall on the last 300,000 square feet of retail space in the massive 1.5 million square-foot Marketplace at Burlington, formerly known as the Burlington Center Mall.

The last surviving business, Sears, is scheduled to close in September. Sears owns its store and the property it's on, but Moonbeam Capital LLC, owns the other 1.2 million square feet of retail space on the 80-acre strip.

What is apparent is the mall owners and municipal officials in Burlington Township will face an increasingly familiar challenge. They'll be seeking solutions to how to reimagine a large tract of land in the center of the community that once was a destination and is now in danger of becoming an eyesore.

"It's a sign of economic times," Burlington Township Mayor Brian Carlin said this week. "It's a sign of a building that was once productive that has now outlived its intended use."

The last store in the Marketplace at Burlington Mall, formerly the Burlington Center Mall, is scheduled to close in September.

Carlin said the township and county development officials are conducting studies of viable redevelopment options.

"The site has become obsolete, meaning it no longer serves the retail market as an enclosed mall, and subsequently has become vacant and deteriorated," said Mark Remsa, director of economic development and regional planning at the Burlington County Bridge Commission, which helps oversee development in the county. "The site is ready for redevelopment. There needs to be a study to figure out what that redevelopment should be."

Carlin said the township wants a mixed-use redevelopment at the site to include some retail, perhaps some residential and industrial. But Carlin said Moonbeam has proposed putting 2 million square-feet of warehouses on the property which he said is unacceptable.

"They said that in order for it to work for them they needed four warehouses and up to 800 residences," Carlin said.

Moonbeam did not respond to multiple efforts to reach them for comment.

Moonbeam Capital is a Las Vegas-based private equity fund specializing in the buying financially-troubled commercial and residential real estate. The company has controlled over 10 million square feet of leasable space in recent years, including Marketplace at Burlington.

Moonbeam bought the shopping center in 2012 for $4.4 million -- a price that had fallen from the estimated value of more than $10 million in the 1990s.

Carlin and other township officials said they proposed a plan to declare the mall property an area in need of redevelopment, which would allow it to offer tax breaks to new businesses to come there. The redevelopment plan could also lead to the municipality declaring eminent domain and acquiring the property by paying the owners fair-market value for it.

Carlin said Moonbeam rejected the offer and the township had no appetite for a public acquisition of the land. Voorhees recently used the strategy in an effort to motivate the owners of the Voorhees Town Center, formerly the Echelon Mall, to agree to an aggressive redevelopment plan.

"I don't know if the Voorhees solution works here," Carlin said. "Obviously it doesn't work economically for the strain it puts on the taxpayers to buy the property."

Burlington Township officials said they faced a similar challenge redeveloping a former Kmart shopping strip nearby on Route 541, between Sunset Road and Kelly Drive. The strip had been vacant for a period of time but the owners agreed to a declaration of an area in need of redevelopment as a recruiting strategy for new tenants.

The strip is now close to fully occupied and includes stores such as ShopRite and Chick-fil-A.

Bill Duhart may be reached at bduhart@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @bduhart. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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