Boscov’s department store anchors the northern end of the Providence Place Mall in the space formerly occupied by the more upscale Nordstrom. (Michael Salerno/Rhode Island Current)
Once the jewel of downtown, the Providence Place mall is no longer in vogue — with shoppers, with tenants, and now, with its lenders.
The flagship state shopping destination was placed into receivership, the state equivalent of bankruptcy, by a Providence County Superior Court judge on Oct. 31. The temporary receivership, first reported by WPRI-TV 12, comes at the request of a group of private lenders who in court filings allege the company that manages the mall owes them $259 million in principal and interest from a loan taken out in 2011.
The $305 million loan is backed by 980,000 square feet of mall space (out of the total 1.3 million square feet) with some of the anchor sites such as Macy’s excluded from the collateral.
Brookfield Properties, the Chicago-based company managing the mall, defaulted on its mortgage loan in May 2021 but staved off serious legal action through a series of extensions on the maturity date, which was pushed off till May 6, 2024. With just over $6.1 million in free cash flow — relative to nearly $255 million in outstanding principal interest owed — Brookfield again asked creditors to push back repayment for another three years, according to a June 2024 report by Kroll Bond Rating Agency.