Less than four months after acquiring the vacant JC Penney location at Cortana Mall, a California investor is putting it back on the market.
Though the 200,000-square-foot former anchor tenant space is not officially listed for sale yet, broker Austin Earhart with Beau Box Commercial Real Estate says it will be soon, probably for around $2 million.
Was it a case of buyer’s remorse?
“I think what happened is he bought it so cheap he didn’t know what he was going to do with it,” says Earhart, who handled the $850,000 sale in late October. “The reality is once he realized what a long road to hoe it’s going to be he decided it would be better to sell it.”
The maintenance and ownership costs on the building are expensive, Earhart notes. Without income from a tenant it was going to be a challenge to make the numbers work—“not to mention that the other three boxes are all for sale or lease,” he adds.
The former Macy’s and Sears locations at Cortana are also both for sale, as is the separately owned mall itself. At one point last year, potential buyers had signed purchase agreements for both Macy’s and Sears but those deals have apparently fallen through.
Adding fuel to the fire, Sam’s Club abruptly shut down its Cortana location earlier this month as part of a nationwide shutdown of more than 140 stores. The store was not technically part of the mall, but was located on an outparcel of the property.
All that said, there is renewed interest in Cortana on several fronts. Two different groups are eyeing the entire property, which consists of six anchor tenant spaces and 1 million square feet of total space. One of those groups is from New Orleans and would do an adaptive reuse of the massive property, Earhart says.
Another potential buyer is looking at the 236,000-square-foot Macy’s space. He is an end user, who wants the space for a non-retail use, Earhart says.
In the unlikely event that the star-crossed mall should find itself with an abundance of riches—a buyer group that wants the entire property and a separate buyer for the Macy’s space—Earhart believes the two could work together.
“I think they could find a way to fit (the Macy’s buyer’s use) into their overall master plan for the property,” Earhart says.
At this point, however, such speculative planning is hypothetical if not overly optimistic.
“What I don’t think a lot of people understand is that just to simply go in and do some creative adaptive reuse isn’t that easy because of the way these malls were designed,” he says. “But hopefully we can make it all work and it won’t just remain a blighted property for Baton Rouge.”
—Stephanie Riegel
