New York state’s third-largest mall is headed to public auction next month after racking up more than $400 million in debt.
The Palisades Center, built by Syracuse-based Pyramid Management Group in the late ‘90s, is scheduled for auction on Feb. 4, according to a notice of sale filed in state Supreme Court earlier this month. The Rockland/Westchester Journal News reports the property is currently listed at $463.4 million, plus interests and costs.
At 2.2 million square feet, the mall is the 13th largest shopping center in America and third largest in the Empire State, behind Long Island’s Roosevelt Field (2.37 million square feet) and Syracuse’s Destiny USA (2.4 million square feet). Pyramid, which still owns Destiny USA, lost ownership of Palisades in 2024 after defaulting on a $418 million mortgage taken out in 2016.
According to the New York Post, the Palisades Center’s loan changed hands between several creditors in recent years and is currently owned by a real estate consortium made up of EklecCo NewCo LLC, Queens Comic’s NewCo LLC, Riesling Associates, and Three J’s Family Trust.
“This is a straightforward foreclosure, like if you had a house and you didn’t pay the mortgage,” bankruptcy lawyer Michael Koplen told News12 Westchester. “Eventually there’s a foreclosure, and that’s what happened here. But of course, the numbers are much bigger than a house.
George Hoehmann, the supervisor of Clarkstown, which includes the hamlet of West Nyack where Palisades is located, told the New York Post that the mall continues to be “a well-performing asset” and expects whoever ends up owning it will continue operating it.
The Palisades Center opened to much fanfare in 1998, attracting 24 million shoppers annually, according to the mall website. As of 2019, the NYC-area shopping center featured 225 different shopping, dining and entertainment options, including an ice skating rink, bumper cars, a rope climbing course, movie theater, and an indoor ferris wheel.