The owner of a huge shopping mall in the Boston suburbs is on the verge of securing a major refinancing deal after more than two years of uncertainty over its CMBS loan.

GGP, a subsidiary of Brookfield Corp., is scheduled to close Oct. 22 on a $400M loan to refinance the Natick Mall, according to a presale report from Fitch Ratings.

The five-year, fixed-rate loan is being originated by Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase Bank, Fitch said. It would then be securitized as a CMBS loan, with Midland Loan Services acting as the servicer.

The borrower — a partnership of GGP and New York State Common Retirement Fund — is putting in $37.2M of additional equity while obtaining the new loan, according to Fitch. It said the money will be used to refinance existing debt, plus fund outstanding landlord obligations and pay closing costs.

The loan is backed by a 1.2M SF portion of the 1.7M SF Natick Mall — the largest in the region. Sitting about 20 miles west of Boston, the mall was built in 1966, then mostly demolished and rebuilt in 1994.

GGP has owned the mall since 1995. The company was acquired by Brookfield in 2018 and has remained the asset management giant's retail division, but earlier this year, it rebranded itself back to GGP.

Its previous $505M loan on the Natick Mall was put on a watchlist by CMBS tracking firm Morningstar Credit in mid-2024, one year after Wegmans closed its 134K SF grocery store at the mall.

The loan was then transferred to special servicing after its November 2024 maturity date. In March 2025, the owner secured an extension that pushed the maturity to November 2026.

The pending refinancing would secure the mall's financial stability for at least another five years. The Fitch report said the asset has been strengthened in recent years as GGP has filled some of the mall's vacancy.

The mall is now 91.7% leased, up from 82.4% in 2022, and its net cash flow has increased from $35.3M to $45.5M over that span, according to Fitch.

Furniture retailer Raymour & Flanigan in March opened a 110K SF store in the former Lord & Taylor space that had been closed since 2021 and was previously planned to be turned into lab space.

Bosse opened a 97K SF pickleball and entertainment venue in late 2024 in the former Neiman Marcus space, which is separately owned and not tied to the CMBS loan.

GGP also redeveloped the former Sears space and has leased it to several tenants, starting with Dave & Buster's in 2018, followed by Level 99, Pokkido Indoor Playground and Lucid Motors.

Wegmans has continued to pay rent on its space despite closing the store, according to Fitch, and this year it secured Asian grocery store T Market to sublease 75K SF, 56% of the space.

“The loan for our Natick Mall represents the great results that GGP continues to achieve,” a GGP spokesperson said in a statement to Bisnow, adding that the loan has not yet closed.

The Natick Mall deal is the second major mall refinancing GGP has in the works: It also has an $800M loan slated to close in October for the Oakbrook Center mall in the Chicago suburbs.

GGP CEO Kevin McCrain said at a Chicago Bisnow event in May that the firm is “on offense” and is looking to grow.