Milwaukee Company Backs Out of Buying Northridge Mall

Northridge Mall. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

A potential buyer for Northridge Mall is throwing in the towel.

Phoenix Investors terminated its purchase option Thursday. The move doesn’t immediately impact the years-long court battle between the City of Milwaukee and the vacant mall’s Chinese-based ownership group, but it does create significant questions about the property’s short-term and long-term future.

The Milwaukee-based real estate company emerged as a potential buyer in March. It has been paying for security at the mall, ending a string of fires and regular trespassing, while it performed its due diligence. Phoenix, which specializes in industrial redevelopment, also had a conceptual plan for the 46.5-acre proeprty.

But city officials have opposed Phoenix’s plans. Phoenix wanted the city to forgive delinquent property taxes and fines, drop the long-standing raze order and issue a zoning change to allow a “mega indoor warehouse storage facility,” said Department of City Development deputy commissioner Vanessa Koster at a June 20 court hearing. Its proposal would have maintained the approximately 900,000-square-foot mall structure, while the city has favored redeveloping the much larger property to create more jobs.

Phoenix founder Frank Crivello told Sean Ryan, who was the first to report the option termination, that it was “a problem I can’t overcome” and that the company “will not be re-engaging.”

The city said it is committed to seeing the property redeveloped.

“The city’s priorities for the property are safety and, ultimately, productive use of the property that benefits the neighbors, the northwest side, and the entire city. A demand was made of city government that included reversing a court-ordered razing, forgiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and forfeitures, and changing the zoning to accommodate indoor warehouse storage. We were not comfortable with those demands,” said Mayor Cavalier Johnson‘s communications director Jeff Fleming in a statement to Urban Milwaukee. “Milwaukee will continue the efforts to advance thoughtful and positive development at the privately-held property. We will also fully participate in the ongoing court case to remedy the problems at the site.”

The city has a pending request before Judge William Sosnay to take control of the property from owner U.S. Black Spruce Enterprise Group, but the company is challenging the city’s raze order and Sosnay’s affirmation of the order in appeals court.

The city, citing an unidentified new funding source, asked for the property to be transferred in lieu of having to spend millions to demolish the structure and then attempt to recoup the demolition costs, plus more than $1 million in unpaid taxes and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.

“I’ll deal with that when the time comes when I have the authority to do so. Right now, my hands are tied,” Sosnay said in June of the appeal. While a ruling is pending on the appeal, Sosnay scheduled a September 29 circuit court hearing on the matter.

The mall, located near N. 76th Street and W. Brown Deer Road, closed in 2003 after 31 years of operation. A predecessor of Black Spruce acquired the property for $6 million in 2008. It has proposed creating an Asian marketplace, but those plans have never advanced.

For additional information on the mall’s history and the lawsuit’s twists and turns, see our earlier coverage.

A representatives of Phoenix did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.

August 2022 Photos

April 2019 Photos