“Having a better capitalized owner of the mall, we believe there will be some investment into the mall, which is only going to continue to improve its value and make it even more of a destination for folks,” Town of Clarkstown Supervisor George Hoehmann told Westfair’s Westchester County Business Journal.
During a foreclosure auction held Feb. 4 at the New York State Courthouse at 60 Centre St. in Manhattan the Palisades Center shopping mall at 1000 Palisades Center Drive in West Nyack, which is in the Town of Clarkstown in Rockland County, was sold for $175 million.
The winning bid was entered by BD Palisades Holdings LLC, affiliated with Stamford-based Black Diamond Capital Management.
“I’m way more optimistic than people would ordinarily think because the new owners look like they will very quickly have a plan if they don’t already and they have capital behind them,” Hoehmann said. “I think that those are all positive things that, frankly, the mall has not had for a number of years now.”
The Palisades Center encompasses 2,359,541 square feet on four levels and has more than 200 stores and restaurants plus a movie theater and an ice rink. A foreclosure action had been filed in 2023 by Wilmington Trust in the wake of the mall owners, EklecCo and Pyramid Management Group based in Syracuse failing to make timely payments on a $418.5 million mortgage. Spinoso Real Estate Group of Syracuse has been the court appointed manager of the mall.
“It was not unexpected that Black Diamond would be successful. They actually acquired the debt and they had the reserve at the auction so it would have been hard to have been outbid,” Hoehmann said. “We had sent staff down there, the town assessor, the deputy town attorney, to the auction to monitor it. There were two other possible bidders but they didn’t submit bids.”
Hoehmann said that Black Diamond is a company that has a track record of acquiring distressed assets like the Palisades Center mall and turning them around. He noted that Black Diamond and Spinoso had worked together on other projects.
“The Spinoso group has done a really good job; the mall has actually secured over 100,000 square feet of leases in the past year,” Hoehmann said. “We know from court documents that there was over a 300% increase in capital expenditures at the mall.”
Hoehmann said that his administration has already reached out to Black Diamond and will be meeting with principals of the firm in the next couple of weeks. He said that there are several building permit applications that have been submitted or are being prepared for continued work at the mall.
Hoehmann recalled that in the past there had been discussion about possibly having a hotel at the site and that could be a future possibility. He noted that the mall’s property taxes right now are about one-third of what they were 20 years ago due to assessment reductions over the years. He said that during the court action that preceded the auction sale there was a tax certiorari that was settled by a judge’s order that was binding for three years and will run into 2027.
Hoehmann initially was elected town supervisor in November 2015 and took office on Jan. 1, 2016. Since 2013, he has served as the president of the Rockland Municipal Planning Federation, which has a mission that includes educating and certifying land use board members across all of Rockland County.
“I’ve heard from some people in our town that they’ve actually noticed some of the things that have been done at the mall of late,” Hoehmann said. “Work has been done to the fire safety system and in some of the common areas. There’s been more care given to the asset. They seem to have had a very good holiday season. The parking lots were full.”
