Leigh Mall is scheduled to be sold in a private auction in October.
Commercial real estate auction company Ten-X posted the sale, slated for Oct. 15-17, on its website late last week. The opening bid is listed at $1.5 million, and participants must pay a $25,000 deposit to register for the online auction. Colliers International is the listing agent.
Colony Financial owns Leigh Mall, located off Highway 45 in Columbus. The company foreclosed in 2018 on Security National Properties after SNP defaulted on a $34.7 million loan for which the mall was one of several properties listed as collateral. Jones Lange LaSalle Americas (JLL) has managed Leigh Mall since the foreclosure.
According to the auction listing, Colliers’ Atlanta-based retail sales team is marketing Leigh Mall as 319,384 square feet of retail space sitting on about 30 acres. Built in 1973, the mall’s occupancy rate has fallen to 57 percent, with original anchor stores JCPenney and Sears having both vacated.
However, the listing notes the “current tenant lineup” of Hobby Lobby, Planet Fitness, Books-a-Million and others as viable moneymakers for new ownership.
“Leigh Mall is now ripe with possibilities for de-malling, repositioning and redevelopment, while continuing to provide reliable current cash flow from national and local tenants,” the listing reads. “… The asset benefits from a high-profile, highly visible location with very favorable access, exposure and parking.”
The property also sits in a “Qualified Opportunity Zone,” which is a federal designation that would offer developers capital gains tax credits for investing in the site.
A source with direct knowledge of the auction, who was not authorized to comment on the record, said the sale would not affect the leases of current mall tenants. Those leases have non-disturbance clauses, the source said, which means both the new mall owners and current tenants are bound to the terms.
Leigh Mall Property Manager Gail Culpepper did not return a call from The Dispatch by press time.
Lowndes County Tax Assessor/Collector Greg Andrews estimated in 2018 the mall property, including all its businesses, is worth between $12 million and $18 million.
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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