DeSoto Square Mall sold

BRADENTON — An affiliate of Great Neck, N.Y., real estate firm Mason Asset Management has purchased Manatee County's largest enclosed mall, DeSoto Square Mall, for $24.6 million.

The price equated to $36 per square foot.

Elliot Nassim of Mason Asset Management confirmed the purchase, but did not reply to additional questions prior to deadline. The firm is known in local real estate circles as an opportunistic buyer, who targets undervalued properties to improve them.

Built in 1973 and last renovated in 1996, the 678,377-square-foot mall has faced troubles of late both from a shifting retail marketplace away from enclosed malls to big boxes and from the loss of one of its four main anchors, Dillard's. The center was 75.5% occupied (165,553 square feet vacant) at the time of the sale, a figure heavily influenced by the 100,151-square-foot vacant anchor space. Its other anchors are Macy's, JCPenney and Sears, whose building is separately owned and was not included in the sale.

“It's got a lot of what it needs for success,” says Patrick Berman of Cushman & Wakefield of Florida Inc., who represented a competing potential buyer for the mall. “It's pretty much got a seven-mile radius all to itself. There are well over 100,000 people, where their biggest draw retail-wise and closest option is the DeSoto Square Mall. So I see good things happening. The buyers got a great asset.”

Berman and other retail experts expect the new owner to redevelop the property. A number of malls across the country, including locally Sarasota Square Mall and Clearwater Mall, are changing their retail mix, adding either a discount high-traffic retailer, an outlet or a specialty retailer, such as Gander Mountain or Cabela's, to bring more daily traffic to the mall.

CBRE agents Casey Rosen of the Miami office, David Conn of the Tampa office and Peter Stevens of the Philadelphia office all represented the seller.

To read more about other malls in the Tampa to Naples region, click here.