Santa Fe Place mall sold to N.Y. investment group
Jan. 5—Spinoso Real Estate Group quietly sold Santa Fe Place during the holiday season to Kohan Retail Investment Group, based in Long Island, N.Y.
Spinoso Chairman and CEO Carmen Spinoso bought the downtrodden Santa Fe mall for $10 million in 2014 and, in 2020, described it as "an asset we're in love with. It's the first mall we bought."
Officials at Spinoso declined to comment, but the Santa Fe County assessor has the Long Island address of Kohan as the owner's address of the mall at 4750 Cerrillos Road.
Kohan did not respond to a request for an interview.
Kohan owns about 65 malls in some 27 states, including North Plains Mall in Clovis, acquired in October 2021. Kohan has its largest mall presence in Texas, Michigan and Pennsylvania and has malls in Arizona, Wyoming, Washington state and Nevada.
"The retail landscape has changed, but many shopping malls have not," Kohan's website states. "We believe the future of these large indoor spaces will be more of a hybrid of entertainment, food and retail than the past model where retail reigned supreme. With the closing of many large anchor stores around the country in the past decade, those large spaces offer unique opportunities for venues of all different types."
Kohan inherits a mall that last year filled its long-vacant anchor, the former location of Mervyn's and Sports Authority, with Conn's HomePlus and recently announced a 2nd and Charles bookstore. Hobby Lobby filled a Sears vacancy in 2019.
Spinoso acquired Santa Fe Place with 65 percent vacancy and brought in national tenants Cost Plus World Market, Bed Bath & Beyond, Hobby Lobby, H&M, Forever 21, Outback Steakhouse, Victoria's Secret and Conn's HomePlus. Champion Car Wash is under construction and a Residence Inn hotel is planned.
Spinoso brought in Regal Cinemas in 2018 and also did extensive exterior and interior renovations.
Spinoso has 29 malls in 19 states, including Cottonwood Mall in Albuquerque, where Spinoso was appointed the receiver in March. Nearly all the malls were acquired since 2019 when Spinoso had only Santa Fe Place and Santa Maria Town Center in California.
Spinoso announced in December that Santa Fe Place general manager Jim Schertzing was promoted to field operations manager at the Spinoso corporate office in Syracuse. Schertzing had started at Santa Fe Place in November 2018 as operations manager, his LinkedIn account says.
Mark Holden is now the mall manager, according to his LinkedIn account.
In a 2020 interview, Spinoso outlined the difficulty in bringing national tenants to a mall, though new major presences had been coming on board since 2016.
"It was harder than I expected," Spinoso said. "It always started with a no. They know I do what I say I'm going to do. They bought in to my vision."
A long-delayed Rad Retrocade, a combined arcade, games, restaurant and bar venue from Las Cruces, is expected to open this year.
