Tabani Group Acquires Northgate Mall

By Adrian Maties, Associate Editor

Rockwood Real Estate Advisors announced on March 26 that it sold Cincinnati’s Northgate Mall on behalf of E3 Advisors, a court-appointed receiver. The Dallas-based Tabani Group acquired the mall through an affiliate, T Northgate Mall L.L.C., for $21.5 million after a seven-month-long negotiation. The new owner plans to soon begin a massive redevelopment of the mall and the surrounding area.

Northgate Mall is a 915,956-square-foot regional mall located in Colerain Township, at Colerain Avenue and Springdale Road, less than a mile south of I-275 and just a mile north of Ronald Reagan/Cross County Highway. It was constructed in 1971/1972 and over the years has undergone several renovations and upgrades, the last of which occurred in 2007. The mall is anchored by Sears and Macy’s, following the closure of Dillard’s in 2009.

In 2005, Feldman Mall Properties L.P. bought the mall for $110 million, but as the financial crisis hit, tenants went bankrupt and closed, and as the number of vacancies rose, its value rapidly decreased. In February 2010, Wells Fargo filed a foreclosure action against the mall, claiming Feldman had defaulted on the $74.6 million loan.

The property was labeled as ”distressed,” but Thomas Dobrowski, managing director for Rockwood Real Estate Advisors, who arranged the sale, thinks otherwise. “Northgate Mall does not fit into the typical ‘distressed mall’ category, whereby investors question the sustainability of the mall. By presenting investors with a solid strategy to reposition the asset, we were able to preserve value for our client and work toward an expeditious closing,” he stated in a press release.

After two years, the mall finally has a new owner willing to invest and make it the center of the community once more. Tabani considers it one of the largest redevelopment projects in the Midwest and will start work as soon as it finishes signing leases with a number of retailers. The Dallas-based company will announce the names of the new tenants in the near future.

Image courtesy of www.facebook.com/NorthgateMallOhio.