Brookfield Selling Mall in Philadelphia Suburb

Brookfield Properties listed a mall for sale in a suburb of Philadelphia, and while the potential purchase price may not be seismic, the property’s possibility is evident.

Brookfield is looking to sell the Neshaminy Mall in Bensalem, PhillyVoice reported. The 91-acre property in Lower Bucks County is 20 miles outside of Philadelphia. Hundreds of thousands of vehicles pass by on any given day, according to its listing, due to its proximity to a pair of highways.

There’s no listing price for the asset, which is approximately half-empty (or half-full in the eyes of the right buyer). The 1-million-square-foot mall could sell for around $25 million, according to the Philadelphia Business Journal, which first reported the listing.

That’s significantly more than the last assessed value. Last year, assessors valued the property at $3.6 million, a 42 percent drop from its 2020 valuation of $6.3 million.

JLL, which is marketing the property, touts potential for redeveloping the property at 707 Neshaminy Mall. That could mean adding multifamily units — an increasingly popular option for redeveloping staid retail hubs — or bringing in more grocery store and restaurant tenants; Uno Chicago Grill and On The Border Mexican Grill are among the restaurants there.

The mall’s been around since 1968, but ran into trouble with the departure of anchor tenants Macy’s and Sears in 2017 and 2018, respectively. Remaining tenants include a 216,000-square-foot Boscov’s location and a Barnes & Noble.

The former 220,000-square-foot Macy’s, technically sited on a separate property and not part of the sale, is being partially converted into a Fusion Gyms. Brookfield aimed to turn the 200,000-square-foot former Sears space into medical offices when it acquired the mall in 2018, but that hasn’t transpired.

A couple of years ago, Brookfield sold the Brass Mill Commons and adjacent Brass Mill Center mall in Waterbury, Connecticut for $45 million. Kohan Retail Investment Group recently tried to flip the Commons for $30 million, but pulled it off the market last week.

— Holden Walter-Warner