From left: Macerich CEO Art Coppola and Roosevelt Field mall on Long Island

In perhaps the latest sign that retail malls are going the way of the dinosaur, industry executives said a prediction that 10 percent of all U.S. malls would be gone in the next decade was too conservative, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Earlier this year, real estate research firm Green Street Advisors said it believed about 100 of the nation’s 1,000 large enclosed malls would be torn down or converted for another use (note: clarification appended). At the International Council of Shopping Centers, industry executives told the Journal that prediction was probably too low. [more]

Higher than anticipated sales on Black Friday have mall owners hoping that the coming holiday season will cure some of the persistent retail vacancy, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Last week’s Black Friday sales totaled $52.2 billion, a record, according to research from the National Retail Federation. Meanwhile in the third quarter malls overall had a 9.4 percent vacancy rate — the highest since numbers began being recorded — according to Reis, a real estate analytics firm.

While mall operators do not rely hugely on holiday sales, the period is a useful bellwether for retail tenants and landlords about what outlets are ready to expand and when and if rents can go up, according to Jay Leupp, a portfolio manager at Lazard Asset Management, an investment manager for institutional clients.

“It’s a better sign and predictor of what retail tenant renewal and expansion activity is going to be going forward, particularly if retail sales are meaningfully stronger than expected,” Leupp said. [more]

Clockwise from top left: World Trade Center site, Port Authority Bus Terminal, South Street Seaport, Hudson
Yards, World Financial Center and Farley Post Office/Moynihan Station

From the September issue: “Mall” has been a four-letter word in the Manhattan retail world for some time now. Despite that, Manhattan property owners have begun to — or are planning to — rehab and build a historic amount of large-scale retail over the next few years.
Currently, developers such as the Westfield Group, Brookfield Properties, the Related Companies and Vornado Realty Trust have more than 2.5 million square feet of retail space under construction, or at least on the drawing board, in mall-like projects south of 59th Street.
If all of what’s planned gets built, it would be the greatest amount of large-scale retail space ever delivered in Manhattan during a five- or six-year period, a review of prior development by The Real Deal shows.

[more]

The auction of developer Yehuda Leib Puretz’s stalled Waterfront Commons mall site in Staten Island was canceled yesterday, a day after his firm filed the $90 million project into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The Brooklyn-based developer, who was planning the 380,000 square-foot mall in the Richmond Valley section of Staten Island near the Outerbridge Crossing, defaulted on a $21.5 million loan connected to the project after the economy stalled in 2008, sources said.

“It [was] largely just a factor of the economy,” said Andrew Boyle, a consultant on the project and COO of the Boyle Group, based in Malvern, Pa. [more]

The empty Caldor site at 136-20 Roosevelt Avenue in Queens and Sam Chang, head of McSam Hotels (building photo source: PropertyShark)

After sitting empty for over a decade, the one-time home of a Caldor department store in Flushing will see new life, according to the New York Daily News. A team of developers, including McSam Hotels, is planning a three-story shopping mall, which will include a restaurant, supermarket and 350-space subterranean parking garage, for the site at 136-20 Roosevelt Avenue. [more]

General Growth Properties, the second-largest shopping mall owner in the country which operates South Street Seaport, has filed a $9.7 billion mortgage loan restructuring plan in bankruptcy court, a move that could inch the troubled company closer to removing 166 of its malls from bankruptcy protection. Speculation has abounded that the company could exit bankruptcy protection by the end of the year — if the plan is confirmed Dec. 15, the group could accomplish this goal. Still, General Growth Properties has $11.7 billion in debt to account for, and must reach pacts with lenders for that debt before it’s out of the woods. “We will continue to work with our other secured mortgage lenders and are hopeful that we will reach additional consensual agreements quickly,” Thomas Nolan, COO of General Growth, said.

General Growth Properties, the second-largest mall owner in the U.S., which operates New York City’s South Street Seaport, has reached a deal with its lenders to extend loans, a move that will allow it to exit bankruptcy by 2010. Representatives from 70 of General Growth’s loans, some of which exceeded $1 billion in value, agreed to extensions averaging six years. The Chicago-based company’s financial woes, marking the biggest real estate failure in U.S. history, according to a report from Reuters, have underscored the nationwide retail crisis, as vacancies in the retail real estate sector have continued to mount as the holiday season approaches.