Members of the Zanesville Planning Commission met this week to discuss a pair of lot-split applications filed by James V. Maniace of Taft, Stettinius & Hollister (Columbus, OH) on behalf of Time Equities Inc. who bought the Zanesville Colony Square Mall last year.

The lot-split applications were filed for both Chipotle Mexican Grill and Longhorn Steakhouse on Maple Avenue.

After a 3-0 approval Tuesday night by the Planning Commission, city staff will be able to move forward with splitting the parcel, which includes the Colony Square Mall, excluding both Elder-Beerman and Cinemark movie theater.

The move would clear any hindrance if corporate ownership chose to buy property from the owners of the mall.

Currently, both properties are in long term leases for their location, owning neither the buildings nor the land they occupy.

According to a report contained in Chipotle’s annual 10-K filing with the Security and Exchange Commission, the company leases “substantially all of the properties on which we operate restaurants.”

Darden Restaurants, owner of Longhorn Steakhouse, also states, “As of May 28, 2017, 1,606 of our 1,695 restaurants operating in the United States and Canada operate in leased locations,” according to the company’s 10-K filing.

Should either party choose to execute their buyout options, they would be able to purchase both the building and land from Times Equities.

However, ownership would not be an end goal, rather a transitional process to bundle multiple properties together in order to find a financial buyer willing to lease back those properties at a desirable rent.

This process, termed a sale leaseback, allows companies such as Chipotle and Longhorn Steakhouse to free up assets such as buildings and property for available cash, allowing them to improve their business.

Sale leasebacks are especially beneficial to the potential lessee during times of low interest rates, as the country is currently experiencing.

Mary Kate Mulhauser of Time Equities stated via email that, “Time Equities subdivided the parcels and is retaining ownership of the assets. Nothing was or is for sale.”

However, according to public records obtained from the City of Zanesville, it is evident that parties involved are in discussion to sell the recently split parcels.

This includes asking the City of Zanesville for a variance.

“The requirement is that they have 200 feet of frontage along Maple Avenue. The Longhorn parcel did, the Chipotle parcel did not. It only has 175 feet of frontage. The code requires 200, so in order to create that new parcel, the applicant had to go before the board of Zoning Appeals to obtain a variance to deviate from the standard,” stated George Kagafas, Planning and Zoning Administrator for the City of Zanesville.

A cross-axis agreement was required by the Planning Commission on the grounds that the private road owned and operated by the Colony Square Mall is the only way of access to both locations.

The move would benefit both parties, yielding cash for a property asset which Times Equities Inc currently owns and allows corporate owners of both Chipotle and Longhorn to bundle their property ownership to a consolidated source at a favorable rate.