Lender pays $43M for Broward Mall in foreclosure auction

The Broward Mall has a new owner after a lender acquired the retail property for $43 million in a foreclosure auction.

An entity representing a U.S.-Barclays commercial mortgage-backed securities trust, or CMBS trust, submitted the winning bid for the roughly 469,000-square-foot mall at 8000 West Broward Boulevard in Plantation, court records show. The only other offer, an $11.7 million bid by Oakland Park-based realtor Eric Nathanson, wasn’t even close to winning.

Built in 1979 on a 30-acre site, Broward Mall’s tenants include Hollister, Bath & Body Works, Buffalo Wild Wings and Victoria’s Secret.

In April, the CMBS trust won a foreclosure judgment for $101.4 million that included interest and attorney fees.

The lender filed a foreclosure lawsuit in June of last year against the previous owner, an entity managed by Amsterdam-based Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, which acquired Westfield Group for about $25 billion in 2018. Westfield Group bought the Broward mall and the Westland Mall in Hialeah for $400 million in 2007.

The ownership entity defaulted on a $95 million loan issued in 2013 after it started missing payments in May 2020, according to the complaint. Shortly after the lawsuit was filed, a receiver, El Segundo, California-based Pacific Retail, took over management of the retail center, including signing new tenants, court records show. Subsequently, the mall changed its name to Broward Mall from Westfield Broward.

Indoor shopping malls took a major hit when government lockdowns forced many commercial properties to close in an effort to slow the spread of Covid-19 during the onset of the pandemic. Among other South Florida malls affected, Pembroke Lakes Mall in Pembroke Pines could have trouble paying off a $260 million interest-only loan that is due in 2024, according to a June Morningstar report. The property is owned by New York-based General Growth Properties.

Poor performance at Pembroke Lakes has made it difficult for the mall to recover from the pandemic’s disruption, with occupancy dropping 26 percent from fully leased, Morningstar found.

In late April, a joint venture between North Palm Beach-based Electra America and Miami-based BH Group paid $100.3 million for Southland Mall, a 808,776-square-foot indoor shopping center in Cutler Bay in Miami-Dade County. The partnership acquired the property from Wells Fargo Bank as trustee for a JP Morgan Chase CMBS trust, which seized the property last year as a result of a $68.7 million foreclosure judgment against the previous owner.