The struggling Eastland Center shopping mall is hitting the auction block.
Current owners CW Capital will auction off about 640,000 square feet of the mall’s 1.4 million square feet of space in an auction on October 11th. They’ll go through Southfield-based real estate brokerage Farbman Group.
The auction covers most of the enclosed portion of the mall. It doesn’t include the spaces formerly occupied by Macy’s and Target and those currently leased by Lowe’s and Home Depot.
The mall has been struggling with declining occupancy rates and violent crime for years. CW Capital has been in charge of the property since 2016 after the former owner lost it to foreclosure.
The city of Harper Woods wants to work with the mall’s next owner to convert Eastland into a mixed-use development. It would include a new city hall and police department headquarters with a civic campus. Eastland is Harper Woods’ largest source of tax revenue and has cost it about $2 million in lost property taxes since 2014.
Eastland is part of a larger trend of declining, once-popular enclosed shopping centers. Other cities around the region — like Southfield with Northland Center and Waterford Township with Summit Place Mall — are trying to figure out how to redevelop their shuttered shopping malls.