The shopping center giant that operates the Queens Center Mall snapped up Glendale’s Shops at Atlas Park for roughly $54 million at a foreclosure auction last week, sources told the Daily News. The firm, Macerich, which bought the complex through WMAP LLC and is slated to close by the end of the month, now owns two of the largest malls in Queens. It was previously reported that lenders Credit Agricole and Société Générale had been hoping to fetch at least $119 million for the outdoor shopping center, which has a Regal movie theater, Borders bookstore and several restaurants. [more]

Glendale’s foreclosed Shops at Atlas Parks will hit the auction block today at Queens Supreme Court after two years of searching for a buyer while under receivership, according to the Daily News. Lenders Credit Agricole and Société Générale haven’t yet decided on an upset price but are reportedly hoping to fetch at least $119 million for the outdoor shopping center, which has a Regal movie theater, Borders bookstore and several restaurants. Developer Damon Hemmerdinger, a relative of former MTA Chairman Dale Hemmerdinger, ceded control of the 400,000-square-foot complex in February 2009 after defaulting on his $128 million loan. [more]

As many as 16 stores could vacate the foreclosed Atlas Park mall in Glendale, Queens, within weeks, unless the banks responsible for the shopping complex’s mortgage agree to reconsider their rents, according to a statement from the tenants’ attorney. Store owners allege that the spaces they occupy aren’t worth the rent they’re being charged. If the 16 shops in question do leave their digs, Atlas Park would have around just two dozen remaining stores, according to the New York Daily News. Further compounding these problems, Société Générale, a French bank and major stakeholder in Atlas Park, has been targeted in a probe regarding improper use of AIG bailout funds. State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo began an investigation into the bank in March in an effort to see if Société Générale may have been the improper recipient of billions of dollars in government bailout funds handed to AIG. [more]

The family of Dale Hemmerdinger, outgoing Metropolitan Transportation
Authority chairman, is trying to take back control of the Shops at
Atlas Park, a Queens mall it founded and then lost to foreclosure in
February, sources told the New York Daily News. A foreclosure sale is
expected to take place later this year or early in 2010, and community
leaders in the Glendale neighborhood of Queens say the Hemmerdingers
formed ATCO Advisory Services, a subsidiary of their retail management
firm, to buy the mall back at the foreclosure sale. But Damon
Hemmerdinger, Dale Hemmerdinger’s son, said that ATCO Advisory Services
was not formed to bid on the mall. [more]