Palisades Center mall headed to auction block

 

It’s the region’s biggest going-out-of-business sale.

The Palisades Center, a 2.2 million-square-foot megamall in Rockland County — and one of the biggest malls in America — is due to go on the auction block next month for an estimated $463 million, according to reports.

The once-bustling retail hub has been targeted for foreclosure for nearly three years because of more than $418 million in unpaid debts that have hung over the property’s owners since 2016, lohud.com said.

Despite the loan changing hands between several creditors in recent years, the mall’s owners finally ran out of time and are gearing up to sell the property to the highest bidder in a Manhattan courtroom Feb. 4.

The mall was originally developed by The Pyramid Companies and is now owned by a real estate consortium made up of EklecCo NewCo LLC, Queens Comic’s NewCo LLC, Riesling Associates, and Three J’s Family Trust, according to the reports.

“This is a straightforward foreclosure, like if you had a house and you didn’t pay the mortgage,” bankruptcy lawyer Michael Koplen told News12 Westchester. “Eventually there’s a foreclosure, and that’s what happened here. But of course, the numbers are much bigger than a house.

“That’s the only thing that I think could happen here, with the exception of an appeal being filed and then a stay against proceedings,” he said. “But no notice of appeal has been filed that I see on the docket.”

The massive mall opened in West Nyack on March 4, 1998, to much hoopla. Olympic figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was on hand to inaugurate a fourth-floor skating rink at the mega center.

In its heyday, there were four anchor stores and a slew of retail shops and more than 225 shopping, eating and entertainment stops that drew as many as 24 million shoppers a year, according to the mall’s website.

But the mall started to get into a financial hole by 2016, when the owners took out a $418 million loan.

During the COVID pandemic in 2020, the owners got an extension on the loan but were still unable to pay it off by its due date of 2022, lohud.com said.

Wilmington Trust, which owned the loan, sued to foreclose in 2023. While the bank then sold off the loan at a loss to another creditor, a notice of sale for the entire mall was finally sent out Jan. 7.

Despite the grim news, George Hoehmann, the supervisor of Clarkstown, which includes the hamlet of West Nyack, isn’t throwing in the towel yet.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s actually going to be a sale,” he told News12. “There looks like there’s going to be a court hearing beginning of February, and then we’ll see what happens from there.

“It’s a well-performing asset, and we’re confident that it will have a bright future going forward,” Hoehmann added. “Whoever is going to end up owning it, they’ll be talking with the town. It’s zoned as a mall.”