Photo courtesy of JLL

One of Connecticut’s biggest malls has sold to one of the biggest owners of distressed malls in the state and elsewhere.

Affiliates of Namdar Realty and Mason Asset Management, both based in Great Neck, New York, bought the Shoppes at Buckland Hills last month for $25.8 million, according to deed filed with Manchester town clerk’s office.

Stadard Insurance Company provided a $12.5 million open-ended mortgage to help finance the sale, according to a town clerk’s filing.

The sale covers the mall’s main core, but several anchor spaces, including the former Sears store and its two Macy’s stores, are still owned by those retailers’ parent companies.

The seller was Spinoso Real Estate Group, the Syracuse, New York-based company managing the mall’s court-ordered receivership. The 1.3 million-square-foot mall had been in foreclosure since 2020 and had been slated for an auction as recently as September of last year.

The sale price is a stark contrast to the next-door strip retail center, the Plaza at Buckland Hills, which traded for $67.5 million in January.

Namdar, in partnership with Mason, already controls the Trumbull Mall, the Crystal Mall in Waterford, the Meriden Mall and the Enfield Square mall. The company had made a deal to sell the latter property to a Nebraska-based developer who planned to tear much of it down and replace it with a power center plus 450 apartments.

The Namdar-Mason partnership specializes in down-at-heel malls, and in some cases has extracted value from them by selling off parcels for redevelopment – an approach that has put it at odds with local officials in Enfield who said the strategy would leave the rump mall difficult to redevelop.