Editorial: The dying source of income of an abandoned shopping center

A mall is not easy money.

According to the International Council of Shopping Centers, an average mall might be between 400,000 and 800,000 square feet, and that’s just the storefronts available for lease. It doesn’t include the common spaces that connect them and often serve as an engine for people to congregate. Nor does it include acres of outdoor parking and the private roads that link to the public.

A mall can cost millions to build and more to operate. That’s a lot of real estate to keep functional and safe. Done right, however, shopping centers can generate hundreds of dollars per square foot.

To be fair, most malls are not fully leased. Drive through southwestern Pennsylvania and you’ll see many empty storefronts at Pittsburgh Mills or Monroeville Mall, and the demolition site that was once Century III Mall in West Mifflin.

Commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield, which maintains offices in Pittsburgh, estimates that retail vacancies fell to a 20-year low in the second quarter of 2024. That’s good news for shopping centers.

But in order to fill these spaces, malls have to be worth renting the space. The problem with many malls is a lack of ownership commitment.

A TribLive investigation shows that the slow, agonizing death of Pittsburgh Mills is not an isolated case. It’s an epidemic of neglect at malls owned by New York’s Namdar Realty Group.

The company, owned by Long Island billionaire Igal Namdar, earned $86.7 million in 2023. That was a 10 percent jump from 2022, according to the Wall Street Journal.

It’s a drop in the bucket of what a thriving, well-run mall could do. If only one medium-sized mall were to lease at an average price of $400 per square foot, the take would be about $160 million.

But to achieve this, you need to work to make the shopping center a place where people want to go. You have to make sure that the parking lot is not a dangerous pile of debris. There is marketing, investment and overhead required to make a lot of money.

Namdar owns seven malls in Pennsylvania and others elsewhere. The history of these shopping centers is one of almost lost losses in the sheriff’s sale, the lawsuits filed by the local government to force the maintenance of dilapidated parking lots and roads and the company’s lawsuit to reduce its tax liability because the space deteriorated is not worth what before. was

This was all just Pittsburgh Mills. A township supervisor describes Beaver Valley Mall in Center Township as a “ghost town.” The only option left at the Logan Valley Mall food court in Altoona is Aunt Anne’s Pretzels. In Wyomissing, the Berkshire Mall has a partially collapsed roof over the anchor BonTon store that has been condemned for two years.

The Chambersburg Mall closed in 2023. The developers wanted to put a mini-casino there. Namdar refused to cooperate and the project was moved to Shippensburg.

This is indicative of a disregard for doing what it takes to make properties, and by extension, communities, thrive. Live Casino Pittsburgh’s presence at the Westmoreland Mall has done more than attract players. It has done what people hoped would happen, creating new growth in and around the mall.

Namdar, however, remains content to slowly squeeze the last drops of revenue out of Pittsburgh Mills. It may be an easier way to make money, but it guarantees that the income stream will not last.