Wal-Mart in Brookdale deal
Wal-Mart jumps in to salvage Brookdale site
Excerpt:
Wal-Mart developer Gatlin Development Co. confirmed Friday that it plans to buy the all-but-empty Brookdale site, ending years of hand-wringing about the failed Brooklyn Center mall with a bang. Terms of the purchase agreement, expected to be signed next week, aren't being disclosed. The 64-acre mall has been on the market for $17.5 million.
Wal-Mart will anchor a large new retail development targeted to open by mid-2014, with a 150,000-square-foot Wal-Mart Super Center that will include a grocery store, Gatlin's president, Loren Van Der Slik, said in an interview Friday. The developer will tear down most of what's there, and build or redevelop an additional 435,000 square feet of leasable retail space, he said.
It will salvage the newer food-court wing of the existing mall, which will be converted to shops in a climate-controlled indoor area, he said.
Gatlin is buying the Macy's store at the site in a separate deal that hasn't closed yet, he said, and plans to tear it down. The existing Sears store will stay and isn't part of either transaction.
Shingle Creek, a brook that runs through the property, will get a makeover. Plans call for excavating the creek from beneath the parking lot where it currently runs, giving it daylight and creating a green creekscape and bike path to connect with one that runs along Bass Lake Road.
The proposed name for the new development: Shingle Creek Crossing.
"It's going to be a great change," Van Der Slik said.
The mall's current owner, a group led by Capmark Financial Group Inc. in Horsham, Pa., couldn't be reached Friday. The group took the ailing mall back in a sheriff's foreclosure auction earlier this year. The previous owner owed about $52 million on the $54 million loan. Capmark itself is struggling through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Comment: Tobin ... thanks for your comment on yesterday's Four Seasons Mall post. I'm not sure if the UPS driver had the information correct or not (re Four Seasons). I am trying to confirm. Back in May I noted another plan for Brookdale!
More on the Brookdale deal: Developer for Wal-Mart buys Brookdale Center:
ReplyDeleteBrooklyn Center’s Planning Commission and City Council could begin reviews of Gatlin’s plans as early as November or once the company files a formal application, Eitel said.
Brookdale’s asset for sale includes the current leased Kohl’s department store. Not included are the Sears department store building and the former Macy’s store.
Earlier this year, Brookdale Mall HH LLC (whose bank lenders include Capmark Finance Inc.) paid $12.5 million for Brookdale in a voluntary foreclosure sale - a fraction of the $54 million mortgage owed by the mall’s previous owners.