The Swansea Mall is no more.
The 90-shop retail destination closed its doors for the last time this weekend. WPRI reports the 84-acre property will be auctioned off by owner the Carlyle Development Group. Town leaders, the station reports, hope to see the land redeveloped.
“It needs to be redeveloped as a mixed-use project such as apartments, senior housing, offices and maybe a small retail component. Our group just doesn’t have the capacity to execute it,” Carlyle CEO Abdi Mahamedi told the station.
Carlyle’s website states that when the firm bought the mall in 2001, “two of the mall’s four anchors were vacant, and the in-line occupancy rate was 75 percent.” Despite revitalization efforts by Carlyle, the mall could not recover; its website currently lists 14 “leasing opportunities” in the mall.
Carlyle sold part of the mall property off in 2014 to Walmart, which built a 152,000-square-foot store there. The remaining two parcels, containing an anchor store and the remainder of the mall, are assessed at $13.77 million.




