Pyramid Loses Another Mall to Foreclosure

Pyramid Management Group’s problems keep piling up.

The commercial owner recently lost the Aviation Mall in Queensbury, north of Albany, to foreclosure. It’s the third mall the landlord has lost to foreclosure in the last year, Syracuse.com reported.

Last month, a judge approved the foreclosure of the mall, ordering the asset be auctioned off within 90 days or as soon as possible. Pyramid defaulted on a $26 million mortgage backing the mall last year, failing to pay its debt by the loan’s maturity date.

The Royal Bank of Scotland provided the mortgage in 2010. Deutsche Bank Trust Co. Americas later assumed the debt — acting as a trustee for the commercial mortgage-backed securities the loan was folded into — and filed its foreclosure action on the mall last May.

In July 2024, a judge appointed a receiver for the property. Last month, a $26.5 million judgment was issued against the 630,000-square-foot mall; Pyramid declined to fight the foreclosure and agreed to the default judgment.

As one of Pyramid’s smaller properties, the owner’s degree of concern about losing the Aviation Mall may have been muted. Besides, there’s plenty of other issues befalling the company.

A year ago, Pyramid lost the 470,000-square-foot, one-story Hampshire Mall in Hadley, Massachusetts, to foreclosure. The asset counted a tenant roster including JCPenney, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Planet Fitness and Cinemark Theaters.

In April, a New York state judge granted a summary judgment to Wilmington Trust, which holds $418.5 million in debt backed by the Palisades Center in West Nyack. Wilmington Trust, acting as a trustee for CMBS bondholders, filed to foreclose on the 2.2 million-square-foot shopping and entertainment complex in 2023, claiming Syracuse-based Pyramid defaulted on the loan tied to the Rockland County property.

And the same month, the Pyramid affiliate that owns Destiny USA in Syracuse — the crown jewel of its portfolio — defaulted on a $300 million mortgage. It failed to secure a loan extension when the maturity date of the mortgage came around the previous June, according to Pyramid’s most recent financial statements.

Lenders have not come after that property yet.

— Holden Walter-Warner