Come February 15, Midwest City’s Heritage Park Mall, 6801 E Reno Ave., will close its doors.

The 575,000-square foot facility has slowly been losing tenants, including two of its anchor tenants, Montgomery Ward and Dillard’s, within the past decade. During the first quarter of 2009, the mall’s roster listed only eight retailers in the mall, including: Bath and Body Works, GameStop, Rainbow USA, GNC, Gift World, New Life Church, Millennium Wireless Kiosk and Hot Spot Pizza. Today, only GNC, Rainbow Apparel and a kiosk remain open.

Retail Specialist Louis Almaraz of Grubb & Ellis|Levy Beffort has long represented mall owner Daniel Rafalian, a California investor who purchased the mall for $7.83 million in 2005. Rafalian had hoped to bring on new anchors to reposition the mall, but that never happened.

“You really need credit tenants to do any major repositioning,” Almaraz says. “They (tenants) just weren’t forthcoming. There was no significant activity that could be generated, so the mall just continued to lose tenants. It’s unfortunate that it’s come to this. There’s a lot of history behind the mall.”

Almaraz says tenants left for a variety of reasons. Some simply went out of business, while others decided to relocate to Town Center Plaza, a new retail complex situated east of Air Depot Boulevard and SE 29th in Midwest City.

Unable to compete with nearby competition, Heritage Park’s occupancy continued to dwindle, and the owner was unable to operate the mall any longer.

Subsequently, the mall’s owner went into default, and at the same time, the property’s lender, Security Pacific Bank, was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Salt Lake City-based SilverLeaf Financial now owns the mortgage note and is working with Rafalian to sell the property and recover their investment.

Moving forward, Alamaraz says, Sears department store will remain open at the site. Also, a Whataburger fast food restaurant at 6525 E Reno Ave. owned by the mall owner will continue to operate.
“Sears business continues to be good,” Almaraz said. “They have a prominent location at the hard corner of Reno and Air Depot and can continue to operate as a freestanding store.”

At this point, Almaraz says, if the mall owner can sell the property to a new investor, an alternate plan could be to convert the mall into non-traditional retail.

“That could be anything from educational, medical or government-related,” Almaraz said.