Ford City Mall For Sale

CHICAGO, IL — Want to buy a mall? Well, you're in luck. Ford City Shopping Center is on the market. New York-based iStar Financial has hired Jones Lang LaSalle to sell the big mall at 76th Street and Cicero Avenue, Crain’s Chicago Business reports.

Ford City opened in 1965 and was one of the first regional malls to be built in Chicago, rivaling Evergreen Plaza in neighboring Evergreen Park. Sam Zell acquired the aging mall in 1987 for $75 million before he turned the deed over in 2012 to iStar in lieu of foreclosure. The aging mall went through some major renovations after the new owner took it over.

Throughout the years Ford City has lost its anchor stores, including Sears and Montgomery Wards. And Carson’s closed last year after parent company Bon-Ton announced it would be shuttering its nameplate stores across the country. Brick-and-mortar shopping centers, such as Ford City, have struggled to stay afloat as more consumers move to online shopping.

Oakbrook Terrace-based Mid-America Asset Management leases the property. Ford City boasts 960,000 square feet of retail space, of which 286,000 square feet is available for leasing. The mall’s lone anchor tenant — J.C. Penney — remains, but the future of the department store is murky as the chain announced Thursday that it would close 18 stores and nine home and furniture shops in 2019 amid sinking sales. More closures may be on the horizon in 2020, according to news reports.

Although shopping centers are a hard sell these days, some creative investors are turning to redeveloping aging malls to mixed-use spaces, mixing hotels, entertainment centers, restaurants and apartments with retail. In 2015, nearby Evergreen Park demolished the 1950s-era Evergreen Plaza, turning the property into an open-air "human life center" with a big box anchor tenants surrounded by smaller stores.

Much to the Village of Evergreen Park and loyal customers’ disappointment, the stand-alone prototype Carson’s store at the rebooted Plaza was among those Bon-Ton stores that closed last year. CSC Generation, which bills itself as a "decentralized, multi-brand technology platform that is saving companies from Amazon" reopened the Evergreen Park Carson’s in November 2018
as a new concept store, blending brick and mortar with online shopping.

According to John Melaniphy III, president of Melaniphy & Associates, a Chicago consulting firm, Ford City has strong demographics and density, but nonetheless, “it’s going to have to evolve.”

“It’s good real estate,” Melaniphy told Crain’s. “A lot of the big-box retailers are there. With some ingenuity, it can be redeveloped.”