Brookfield dodges default with $700M loan on Denver-area mall

Brookfield Properties dodged a bullet near Denver by refinancing a 1.6 million-square-foot mall at the 11th hour for $700 million.

The New York-based investor secured the loan for the Park Meadows indoor mall two days before it was set to mature at 8401 Park Meadows Center Drive, in Lone Tree, the Denver Business Journal reported. Its $615 million loan was set to mature Nov. 1.

The new loan is good for five years, Brookfield said in an email to the newspaper. The name of the lender was not disclosed.

The unit of Toronto-based Brookfield had owed $615 million on an interest-only loan, and had been making payments since late 2019. The loan was tacked onto loan-servicer watch lists in September because of its pending maturity deadline.

Brookfield had paid 3.18 percent interest, or $1.6 million a month for the past 48 months. Financial terms of the new loan were not disclosed.

Park Meadows, built in 1996 and revamped in 2018, is the second-biggest shopping center in the Denver market, with more than 170 restaurants and stores, according to the Business Journal.

As of March, what Brookfield calls “Colorado’s only retail resort” was 97 percent leased to such tenants as Crate & Barrel, Nordstrom and Williams Sonoma.

In October 2019, the value of the Park Meadows mall was $1.2 billion, according to its last known lender appraisal, listed in loan documents.

The commercial loan for another Denver-area mall, Colorado Mills at 14500 West Colfax Avenue in Lakewood, was also set to mature on Nov. 1. Indianapolis-based Simon Property Group, owner of the mall, had a $119 million loan linked to the property.

It’s not clear if Simon Property was able to pony up its payoff before the due date.

Colorado Mill is the fourth-largest shopping center in the Denver area by size, with more than 1.4 million square feet, according to the Business Journal.

Brookfield Properties owns 135 retail properties, containing 117 million square feet, in 40 states, according to its website. But it doesn’t always pay off its mortgage loans.

In July, Brookfield’s Town East Mall in Mesquite, Texas, was sent to special servicing for maturity default on a loan with a balance of $66.4 million, The Real Deal reported.

The firm has been trying to refinance its malls after $1 billion worth of loans tied to Brookfield properties were in distress last year.

In June, Brookfield scored fresh financing for about 700,000 square feet of a 1.2 million-square-foot mall in the Inland Empire of Southern California, with a $265 million loan. The firm also landed a $750 million refinancing for 1 Liberty Plaza, a 2.3 million-square-foot tower in Manhattan’s financial district.

In June last year, Brookfield Properties and Paris-based Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield flipped the keys of a half-empty Westfield San Francisco Centre mall to its lender after they ceased making payments on a $558 million loan. The shopping center in Downtown San Francisco is now up for sale at a foreclosure auction slated for Nov. 14.

— Dana Bartholomew