CBL In Talks To Hand Over Arbor Place Mall Near Atlanta To Lender
A Chattanooga, Tennessee-based REIT is stepping aside to allow its lender to foreclose on a major Metro Atlanta mall.
CBL & Associates Properties is in talks with its lenders to cooperate on a foreclosure or conveyance of three eastern U.S. retail properties, including Arbor Place Mall in Douglasville, the company said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The REIT faces a May 1 maturity date for an $85.5M interest-only JPMorgan Chase loan attached to the 1.1M SF Arbor Place Mall some 20 miles west of Downtown Atlanta, according to Morningstar Credit Analytics.
Morningstar lists KeyCorp Real Estate Capital Markets Inc. as the special servicer for the loan. However, Arbor Place hasn't been handed to the special servicer, Morningstar Associate Managing Director David Putro said in an email.
CBL is also in talks to allow lenders behind its $49M financing for Jefferson Mall in Louisville, Kentucky, and the nearly $20M loan on The Outlet Shoppes at Gettysburg in Pennsylvania to convey or foreclose on those properties, according to its SEC filing.
The REIT originally received a $122M loan in 2012 for Arbor Place, according to Morningstar.
“We are in discussions with the lender, and we intend to cooperate with the foreclosure or conveyance of the properties to satisfy the debt,” CBL spokesperson Stacey Keating said in an email. “The timeline is determined by the lender, and regardless of the outcome, there will be no impact to the mall, its tenants, or to our customers in those markets.”
CBL is likely handing Jefferson and The Outlet Shoppes to its lenders, CoStar reported, citing a supplemental filing.
The REIT developed Arbor Place, which is anchored by Dillard’s, Belk, Macy’s, Sears and JCPenney, in 1999, and the property was 93% leased as of September, according to Morningstar.
All the anchors but JCPenney own their own spaces, leaving CBL in control of 546K SF. Arbor Place generated $7.2M in net operating income during the first nine months of 2025, according to Morningstar.
The moves on the properties come as CBL posted $4.3M in profit on $166.6M in revenues in 2025, up from $1.9M on revenues of $163M the year prior. But the retail and mixed-use REIT has been working through several troubled loans.
CBL CEO Stephen Lebovitz, speaking about the REIT's 2025 results, said the firm is in the process of getting out from under loans and freeing up capital for future investment.
“We generated approximately $240 million of disposition proceeds at attractive valuations in 2025,” Lebovitz said in a news release. “In addition to reducing leverage, we redeployed this capital into the acquisition of four dominant enclosed malls at mid-teens cap rates.”
In July, the lender for CBL’s Southpark Mall in Colonial Heights, Virginia, put its $48.3M loan on the mall in receivership to help facilitate its foreclosure. Earlier in March, CBL conveyed Alamance Crossing East in Burlington, North Carolina, to satisfy a more than $41M loan, according to SEC filings.
CBL also sold its Monroeville Mall in Pittsburgh, famous for being the prime filming location of the 1978 horror classic Dawn of the Dead, to Walmart for $34M in February 2025.
Foot traffic at indoor malls in the U.S. jumped 9.7% year-over-year in March as mall operators transform their properties into experiential destinations, according to the real estate research platform Growth Factor.
