After the sale of the Nugget Mall fell through in June, Seattle-based corporate lending company Columbia Pacific Advisors took ownership of the mall.
Brad Shain, a fund manager for CPA, said he and his company are not strangers to the world of turning around retail stores and malls that have fallen on hard times.
“We’ve done this many, many times,” Shain said in a phone interview this past Friday. “We have a number of assets that are in an analogous position as this one that we’ve taken over and we’ve repositioned, fixed up and leased. This is not a complicated process for us. We do this and we’re good at it.”
It’s fairly simple, Shain said, once you invest enough money. He said they already have two prospective tenants lined up and ready to go, but declined to share the names of them until everything was official.
“There’s appetite to be (in the mall),” Shain said, “but it needs an owner like us who’s willing to invest in it.”
California-based Aventine Development Services bought the mall for $12.5 million earlier this year, but backed out after seeing there was more work to be done than expected, said Kevin Hanchett, who oversaw the sale for Resource Transition, at the time.
Shain acknowledged that there was quite a bit of work to do, as he saw when he visited the property recently. The parking lot is in rough shape, he said, and there are a few abandoned cars that need to be removed.
Juneau residents have already been reaching out to Shain and CPA, he said, expressing their excitement for the mall to return to form.
Shain said the former owners of the mall weren’t giving tenants an allowance or payment for maintenance, and the mall got run down. An owner with more money, he said, could keep the mall in better shape and attract businesses back to the property.
Shain said his fund has about $650 million and his portfolio has nearly 50 assets all over the country. He has the resources, he said, and is looking forward to making changes to the mall.
“You guys will see the improvements and you’ll see what we’re doing with the property,” Shain said. “I think our money will speak loud. As we improve the property, you’ll see it happening and we’re serious about this. We’re not going to let it languish.”
• Contact reporter Alex McCarthy at 523-2271 or amccarthy@juneauempire.com. Follow him on Twitter at @akmccarthy.
