NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) — MacArthur Center is under new management after the mall’s former owner defaulted on a $700 million loan.
Syracuse, New York-based Spinoso group is now managing the day-to-day operations at the 23-year-old regional shopping mall. They were appointed by Wells Fargo bank late last year, according to Jared Chalk, Norfolk’s economic development director.
Wells Fargo is serving as the special servicer on the loan Starwood Retail Partners took out when they purchased the 928,000-square-foot property in October 2014, along with several other malls around the country.
Since then, the mall has struggled to compete with the rise in online shopping as well as a plethora of other commercial development. One of MacArthur’s two anchor stores — Nordstrom — closed in 2019 and remains vacant.
However, longtime mall General Manager James Wofford said shoppers shouldn’t notice any large changes, at least not in the short-term. He was hired on by Spinoso and said leasing continues.
Nick Egelanian, the founder of SiteWorks Retail Real Estate, said Spinoso is essentially a caretaker at this point.
“Its role is to simply maximize the value of the asset and eventually turn it into cash,” Egelanian said. “They’ll either sell the mortgage or sell the property at some point.”
Chalk said discussions about the future of the property are ongoing with Spinoso. A recently approved downtown plan for the city imagined a 2030 MacArthur Center broken up into different uses.