The once-proud Palisades Center mall in Rockland County was just sold off at auction for $175 million — a pittance of what it was hoped to fetch — and remains in a deep financial hole.
Black Diamond Management, an affiliate of BD Palisades Holdings which was already juggling the megamall’s whopping $463 million debt, was the only bidder for the retail giant at the fire sale in Manhattan last week.
Locals are hoping the sale somehow saves the 28-year-old mall, the Rockland Business Journal reported.
“I see the future being very bright,” Clarkstown Supervisor George Hoehmann insisted to News12.
“They’ve got a real track record of taking malls like this and giving them a shot in the arm,” Hoehmann told the outlet of its buyer. “They bring in different components and build on what’s there — and I think there’s a lot to build on the Palisades Mall.”
But the sale doesn’t erase the site’s lingering debt, which is still at least $288 million and has hung over the property for more than a decade.
The Palisades Center’s fate was long tied up in a legal battle between Eklecco, the mall’s previous owner, and Wilmington Trust, which filed for foreclosure in 2023 after years of restructuring the debt.
Black Diamond purchased the debt in October, but the property went into receivership, which set the stage for the auction, an attempt to pay off the outstanding balance.
But BD Palisades Holding was the only bidder — and at a fraction of the debt.
The question now is whether the investor can return the mall to its former glory.
The 2.2 million-square-foot mall opened in West Nyack on March 4, 1998, to much hoopla.
Olympic figure skater Nancy Kerrigan was on hand to inaugurate a fourth-floor skating rink at the mega center.
In its heyday, the mall featured four anchor stores amid more than 225 shopping, eating and entertainment stops that drew as many as 24 million shoppers a year.
In recent years, it was unable to outrun the massive debt that had been building for over a decade, with the COVID-19 pandemic only making it harder to stay above water.