Lincolnwood Town Center’s $47M loan in default again

The Lincolnwood Town Center has joined the list of Chicago-area malls facing mounting financial troubles.

Mall owner Washington Prime Group defaulted again on its $47 million mortgage, according to Crain’s. The company most recently skipped a January payment on the loan, which has a looming maturity deadline of April 1, the report noted.

The Ohio-based real estate investment trust said in its fourth quarter earnings report Tuesday that “there exists substantial doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern,” according to the Columbus Dispatch.

Last year, Washington Prime, led by Louis Conforti, negotiated a forbearance agreement with its lender on the 423,000-square-foot Lincolnwood complex. The REIT was allowed to withhold mortgage payments from May through October on the 30-year-old property, according to Crain’s.

The company is a spinoff of mall giant Simon Property Group and operates 100 shopping centers nationwide, including three in Illinois.

The pandemic has decimated shopping centers and retail operators across the country, including several outside Chicago. In October, news broke that Starwood Retail Partners was handing over the keys to its lender on the nearly 1 million-square-foot Louis Joliet Mall. That came after the company defaulted on its loan last spring, and a couple of months after parent company Starwood Capital Group lost control of a seven-property regional mall portfolio.

Two large Chicago-area malls owned separately by Simon and a KKR-led venture — Gurnee Mills and Yorktown Center — also struggled last spring, missing debt payments.

And in the fall, a report showed that Cook County malls and hotels had skipped nearly $500 million in property tax payments. [Crain’s] — Alexi Friedman