Lerner Hands Over Keys To Dulles Town Center Mall
The struggling Dulles Town Center mall has come under new ownership.
Centennial Advisory Services announced Tuesday it has taken over management of the retail center, LoudounNow first reported.
Centennial was retained to manage the property by an affiliate of New York Life Insurance Co., which acquired the mall through a deed in lieu of foreclosure from former owner Lerner Enterprises, the Washington Business Journal reports.
Lerner, which had owned the mall in partnership with health insurer Cigna, still owns over 500 acres of property around the mall. The company's larger Dulles Town Center development includes over 1,500 residential units, 200K SF of office space, a hotel and additional retail. It has another 600 apartments and 250K SF of retail under development in the area.
The 1.4M SF mall sits on 23.5 acres. Its value has plummeted in the two decades since its 1999 opening. It was valued at $300M in 2008, $184M in 2018, and after last month's foreclosure, its value was listed at $55M.
The mall has lost two anchor tenants, with Nordstrom closing in 2017 and Lord & Taylor closing in 2019. The mall's Regal Cinema has remained closed during the coronavirus pandemic. It still features dozens of stores and restaurants, with over 160 retail spaces in total.
The closures have come as the shopping mall industry has faced a host of challenges before and during the pandemic. The rise of e-commerce has been damaging the department store sector for years, and the coronavirus exacerbated the problems by preventing people from shopping in person.
Centennial is considering a mixed-use redevelopment of the Dulles Town Center over the long term, LoudounNow reported, but it didn't share any details on its plans. In the near term, it is focused on helping the mall's existing tenants get through the pandemic.
“At Dulles Town Center, we will be working hand-in-hand with the shopping center’s existing tenants to help them through the difficulties COVID has posed, and to institute a new hospitality-themed focus and customer experience that we expect will ultimately attract new tenants to the property as our vision for the future of this center is unveiled," Centennial Chief Operating Officer Whitney Livingston said in a release.
