Photo courtesy of the Marlborough assessor's office
One of the MetroWest region’s biggest malls has traded hands after several years in receivership for a fraction of its assessed value.
A federal bankruptcy court approved the property’s sale to a pair of affiliates of Ohio-based investor Industrial and Commercial Property, also known as ICP, for $8.5 million Dec. 5., however, the sale closed on Monday according to a receiver’s deed recorded in the Worcester and South Middlesex registries.
The mall’s front door at 601 Donald Lynch Blvd. sits in Marlborough, but the back half of the mall property lies across the town line in Berlin.
Huntington National Bank provided ICP the $6.75 million mortgage used to finance the sale.
Marlborough officials assess the 29-year-old mall at $19.92 million. The property sold Monday neither includes the mall’s $6.97 million, 111,324-square-foot JCPenny anchor nor its $11.11 million,199,656-square-foot Macy’s anchor, both of which are owned by the stores’ respective parent companies.
Mortgage-holder U.S. Bank sued the Solomon Pond Mall’s former owner, Simon Property Group, in 2021 over non-payment of a $110 million non-recourse loan on the property from 2012, after the mall’s revenues collapsed during the COVID-19 pandemic when Simon Property Group temporarily closed all 12 of its Massachusetts malls for public health reasons.
The mall has been in receivership since September 2021, with JLL Capital Markets appointed by the court to help market the property.
As of publication it was not immediately clear what ICP plans to do with the mall, but a number of legacy area malls have generally suffered as shoppers gravitate to newer properties, leaving owners to experiment with novel tenants like art galleries and pickleball courts, or even housing-heavy redevelopments.
The Solomon Pond Mall’s website currently lists 75 retail and restaurant tenants, including its two anchors and several national brands, like clothier H&M, skincare retailer Bath & Body Works and jeweler Zales.
The Solomon Pond Mall appears to be ICP’s first foray into Massachusetts, but it has a history of repositioning enclosed malls into light industrial tech and manufacturing business parks in the Midwest.
Locally, the most recent mall redevelopment in Central Massachusetts and MetroWest – Worcester’s Glendale Mall – saw a moribund retail property demolished in favor of an Amazon delivery center.
