At last: This dying indoor shopping mall is up for sale
The Boynton Beach Mall is up for sale as a teardown, a move that would mark the end of the nearly 40-year-old suburban shopping center but could launch a new residential enclave featuring almost 2,000 homes.
The mall's 91 acres, on the west side of North Congress Avenue and just north of Old Boynton Road, are being marketed by JLL, a national brokerage firm.
The property's main feature is its potential redevelopment into at least 1,700 housing units at a time when real-estate developers are eager to find any bit of dirt in Palm Beach County for new homes.
In addition to the dying indoor mall, the Boynton Beach site features oceans of mostly empty parking lots.
JLL said in its marketing materials that the 801 N. Congress Ave. site "is poised to benefit from the insatiable demand for large-scale residential development," adding that new housing units could exceed 1,700 units because Boynton Beach "is a development-friendly municipality."
JLL said the 892,000-square-foot enclosed mall features tenants on short-term leases, or leases that can be terminated, all expiring by 2025.
Boynton mall is "poster child" for a failing mall, says leasing manager
If the Boynton Beach Mall sells to a buyer wanting to redevelop the property, it would mark the end of a once-bustling mall that has been subsequently hard hit by competition from other shopping centers, safety concerns of patrons and the rise of online shopping.
"When someone talks about a mall failing, the Boynton Beach Mall is the poster child for that," said Al Ferris, leasing manager of The Gardens Mall in Palm Beach Gardens. "It's an old-fashioned mall with real estate leadership that took the cheap and easy way out. Instead of reinventing that property, they let the competition overwhelm them."
In its marketing materials, JLL doesn't even refer to the down-and-out Boynton Beach Mall by its name.
Instead, the mall at 801 N. Congress Ave. is dubbed "Boynton Beach 91."
The city of Boynton Beach is aware that the mall is up for sale, said Adam Temple, assistant city manager.
In its offering, JLL said the city "is excited to see this site activated through redevelopment" and that the municipality has pledged to work with a buyer to ensure the transformation "is not inhibited by any governmental order."
An official with the Boynton Beach Mall's owner, mall operator Washington Prime Group, did not respond to a request for comment.
End of an era for this Boynton Beach indoor shopping center
The 38-year-old Boynton Beach Mall opened its doors in 1985 with former retail giants like Burdines, JCPenney, Jordan Marsh and Lord & Taylor. A Macy's opened in 1989, Mervyns replaced Lord & Taylor in 1991 and a Sears replaced Jordan Marsh in 1992. Dillard's came into the picture in 1997 to replace Mervyns.
When the Boynton Beach Mall first opened, it was one of only a few retail destinations along the fledgling Congress Avenue corridor, and its presence helped pushed residential and commercial developments in the area.
Today, Boynton Beach's population is 80,089, according to 2021 U.S. Census numbers, and the areas around and west of the mall have exploded with new residential developments.
But instead of being an indoor community gathering spot, the Boynton Beach Mall is a place many area residents shun.
Caryn DeVincenti moved to suburban Boynton Beach in 2005 from the Washington, D.C., area. At first, she said she frequented the Boynton Beach Mall.
"We went to Claire's for ear piercings, and at Christmastime for the train rides," she said.
But after a 2006 Christmas Eve shooting inside the mall left one man dead, DeVincenti said she never again felt safe there.
These days, she said she'll occasionally step into the Macy's department store, "but I run in and run out."
Her decision doesn't surprise Orin Rosenfeld, a commercial real estate broker and retail expert with Rosenfeld Realty Advisors in Boca Raton.
"The beginning of the end of any mall is security," Rosenfeld said. "There's absolutely no question of a feeling of not being safe there."
More: Developer to demolish Palm Beach Mall to make way for new retail center
Rival malls open, and shopping shifts to online purchases
During the past two decades, the Boynton Beach Mall has faced other hurdles, starting with increased competition from new shopping malls.
In 2000, the CityPlace mixed-use center opened in West Palm Beach with a host of retailers that siphoned off some Boynton Beach Mall shoppers. The next year, in 2001, the Mall at Wellington Green, a suburban indoor shopping mall, opened and diverted even more customers.
Meanwhile, beginning in 2003, nearly 200 acres on the east side of Congress across from the Boynton Beach Mall were transformed into residences, strip shopping centers and restaurants. Among the retailers: Super Target and Best Buy.
Big-box retailers and chain restaurants also began crowding Congress Avenue, some of them right in front of the mall itself. They include Dick's Sporting Goods, Longhorn Steakhouse and Olive Garden.
Rosenfeld said the big-box stores and strip shopping centers created a new downtown for Boynton Beach along Congress Avenue.
Tenants liked being on the avenue because their stores were visible from the street and less expensive to rent than interior mall space, he said. And shoppers liked the ease of parking right in front of a store.
By 2014, the old Palm Beach Mall in West Palm Beach, which had been torn down, reopened as the Palm Beach Outlets (now Tanger Outlets) marking a final blow for the Boynton Beach Mall.
"There was no competing with that," said Ferris, a longtime retail executive in Palm Beach County's market.
At one time, the Boynton Beach Mall had more than 135 stores. But as stores closed, the mall's owners replaced them with local retailers and mom-and-pop stores.
Today, the mall is 94% occupied, according to the JLL offering. The mall's website lists 115 retailers, but a number of them are for personal-care services, such as nails and salons, as well as jewelry and shoe stores.
A few national retailers, such as Victoria's Secret and Bath & Body Works, remain.
Two major department stores also are open: Macy's and JCPenney. Sears closed in 2019, and the Dillard's is now Dillard's Clearance.
For sale: The Boynton Beach Mall
Simon Property Group sheds two Palm Beach County malls
The Boynton Beach Mall previously was owned by Simon Property Group, which unsuccessfully tried to sell the mall in 2011. Three years later, Simon quietly unloaded the mall and several others to Washington Prime Group, a spin-off it created and named. Washington Prime Group is based in Ohio and Indianapolis.
The Boynton Beach Mall is the second Palm Beach County mall that Simon let go.
In 2010, Simon allowed the Palm Beach Mall to go into foreclosure, after it, too, was the scene of a fatal shooting, in 1999. The Palm Beach Mall was acquired by New England Development, then torn down and rebuilt into the Palm Beach Outlets. Simon still owns Town Center at Boca Raton.
What does it take to maintain a successful indoor mall?
Indoor shopping malls once were a landmark in suburban America, but many have been shuttered and turned into other uses.
Today's successful malls make frequent and bold moves, Ferris said, including bringing in luxury retailers and trending stores.
Restaurant openings: Tommy Bahama debuts island-themed bar in Palm Beach Gardens
In Palm Beach County, two malls feature luxury retailers: The Gardens Mall in Palm Beach Gardens and Town Center at Boca Raton.
Ferris said indoor shopping malls that are able to weather fickle consumer habits and the rise of online shopping do so by adding new and interesting tenants on a regular basis. Just recently, The Gardens Mall welcomed The Marlin Bar to the Tommy Bahama retail space.
"You have to constantly reinvent," Ferris said.
Rosenfeld agreed.
"Any property has to keep up as times change," Rosenfeld said. "You have to continue to invest in it and make sure it continues to be attractive to tenants. It definitely didn't happen at the Boynton Beach Mall."
Boynton Beach leaders seek to revitalize mall site
In 2020, the city of Boynton Beach approved a rezoning of the Boynton Beach Mall to suburban mixed-use, which would allow up to 20 housing units per acre, plus commercial uses.
In its marketing materials, JLL said this translates into zoning that allows up to 1,700 housing units, including single-family houses and townhouses, as well as rental apartments.
Amanda Radigan, Boynton Beach's director of planning and zoning, said no housing units or uses are approved until a master plan or site plan is approved by the city.
More homes could possibly be built on the 6.2-acre Pine Preserve on the northwest corner of the mall property, JLL said in its marketing documents. JLL noted a June report by the Kimley-Horn engineering firm that indicated the preserve is in "low-quality condition" that might make it eligible for redevelopment if at least 25% of the native habitat is preserved.
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Other allowed zoning uses for the mall property include office buildings, a medical and university campus and even a sports complex, JLL said in its marketing brochure. Buildings could rise up to six stories, JLL added.
At the time the property was rezoned in 2020, the goal was to rid the city of "a wasteland of concrete," former Vice Mayor Justin Katz said at one meeting.
Then came the coronavirus pandemic.
Citing COVID, Washington Prime Group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in June 2021. The company, a real estate investment trust, emerged from Chapter 11 in October that same year.
Nearly two years later, the mall is for sale in a bid to attract developers eager to find any site on which to build more housing. It's unclear what price the 91 acres could fetch, but the property's assessed value in 2022 is $29.6 million, JLL said.
Will fractured property ownership hurt development?
Any entity that buys the Boynton Beach Mall site will have to contend with a property dotted with multiple owners.
The Cinemark movie theater, for instance, is not part of the mall's ownership company, Boynton Beach Mall LLC. Neither is the Macy's on the south side of the mall, which is owned by the department store company.
In addition, one of two Dillard's department store spaces was sold to Christ Fellowship Church in 2012.
Rosenfeld said he didn't think the presence of the church, Macy's and the movie theater would be a hindrance to redevelopment of the mall space and its vast parking lots.
When it comes to housing, "there's a tremendous shortage," he said. "I'm sure there's a market for new housing within walking distance to everything."
Alexandra Clough is a business writer and columnist at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at aclough@pbpost.com. Twitter: @acloughpbp. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: The Boynton Beach Mall is for sale. What could happen to the site?
