SAGINAW TOWNSHIP, MI – Two competing investors engaged in a bidding war during the final minutes of the online auction to buy Fashion Square Mall, with a $10.8 million bid topping the rest, officials said.
Auctioneers said the winning bid will not be considered a final sale until additional paperwork is completed within 30 days. Officials said they would keep the investor’s identity confidential until then.
Bidding for Fashion Square Mall began at noon on Monday, August 22 and was scheduled to end at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, August 24.
For most of the event, the top bid was $6.3 million, the auction website showed. But a flurry of activity — 10 bids in all — pushed that dollar figure into the millions during a dramatic final 25 minutes.
At 10:50 a.m. Wednesday, the top bid was $7.3 million. Three additional bids raised the price to $8.3 million just before 11 a.m. A bid of $8.8 million – submitted with less than 30 seconds remaining – reset the website’s timer that was counting down until no other bids would be accepted. Any new bids after that point reset the countdown timer to three minutes, extending the event beyond the 11am deadline.
There were six bids submitted after 11:00
At one point, an offer of $10.6 million came within moments of receiving the lead bid. However, with about five seconds left on the timer, a counteroffer of $10.7 million reset the countdown again. The next — and final — bid of $10.8 million was entered at 11:14 a.m.
The auction ended three minutes later.
Southfield-based real estate firm NAI Farbman was one of the managers of the online auction, along with Ten-X, an Irvine, Calif.-based real estate firm.
The center was available for purchase in part because its previous owner — Great Neck, New York-based Namdar Realty Group — in 2020 defaulted on $34.8 million in mortgage debt owed to Wells Fargo. The lending giant then snapped up the property last year as part of a foreclosure auction, with plans to sell it at this week’s online auction.
Fashion Square Mall opened on Oct. 4, 1972, when shoppers first walked through the doors of the facility built on 71 acres of farmland in northern Saginaw Township.
At the time, anchor tenants JCPenney and Sears were the site’s main attractions. Other inaugural vendors included Town & Country Fashions, William C. Wiechmann Co., Bintz Sports, Carter Shop, Seitner’s, Alfano’s Stride Rite and Tait’s Hobby Shop.
Fashion Square Mall filled with customers during the mall boom that helped define American culture in the 1970s and 1980s. In turn, the mall fed a hungry commercial district, attracting business growth to Bay and Tittabawassee streets during those early decades.
In 1993, a new food court was added, keeping customers fed during long sessions spent browsing the stores.
Eight years later, the facility underwent a $10 million facelift that applied a 21st-century sheen to its 1970s-built hull.
However, foot traffic has weakened in recent decades, as a result of the region’s declining population, as well as a shift in consumer shopping habits to online stores.
In January 2001, CBL & Associates Property Inc. Chattanooga-based purchased the complex along with 20 other regional centers and two malls from the mall’s original developer – Richard E. Jacobs Group Inc. based in Cleveland – for $1.2 billion.
The center was sold again in July 2016 to Namdar Realty Group – along with The Lakes in Muskegon – for a total price of $66.5 million, including the assumption of a $38.2 million loan secured by Fashion Square Mall.
Not all of the 529,944-square-foot mall was up for auction this week.
While most of the stores in the 100-unit mall are tenants, Macy’s has its own box there.
Sears also owned its own box on the northernmost corner of the facility, though the store closed in 2019. Hoffman Estates, Illinois-based Transformco — which now owns Sears and its former space in the center — hired Stokas Bieri Real Estate for sold old Sears Unit. That property remains for sale.
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