Jackson Free Press

After a year of being revamped and renovated, Metrocenter mall is up for sale.

Real-estate broker The Overby Company is listing the mall, excluding several attached department stores, for 
$6.5 million. Among the parts of the mall that are not for sale are the former Dillard's and Belk department stores, which the city of Jackson leases from owner Retro Metro, and the Burlington Coat Factory store, which is owned by that company.

The Sears department store is also for sale (the store closed in 2012), but it is owned by Sears and not included in that $6.5 million listing. Overby did not reveal its asking price.

In October 2012, First Credit Bank of Los Angeles foreclosed on Jackson Metrocenter Mall LTD, a Texas-based company. First Credit Bank hired management firm Oversight LLC, to bring the mall up-to-date and get it ready for sale.

"They brought us in to stabilize it," Metrocenter Operations Manager David Sewell said. "That's what we've tried to do. "

Under Oversight's management, available space for new tenants doubled from 175,000 to 350,000 square feet. Manager Scott Overby oversaw the creation of the 60,000-square-foot La Plaza de Metrocenter, an area geared toward Latino-owned and operated stores. The food court added several new vendors, including Mac's Pizza and Sameerah's (a health-food store), and local chef Tina Funches has opened a soul-food joint called Southern Kitchen that serves breakfast, blue-plate lunches and supper.

"The prospective buyer, whoever it is, is likely to be someone who invests in shopping malls," Sewell said. "We've got a great staff. There are (employees) here who have been here 20-plus years."

Metrocenter opened in 1978 as one of the first major malls in the Jackson area, but it fell on hard times for numerous reasons. First among them was white flight, which led to competition from other, newer malls. Northpark Mall in Ridgeland opened in 1984. "Suburban lifestyle" centers opened later—including Ridgeland's Renaissance at Colony Park, and Dogwood Festival Market and Promenade in Flowood.

By fall of last year, the mall's conditions deteriorated due to budget cuts, despite attempts to reduce operating costs by partitioning sections of the mall. The effort backfired when many of Metrocenter's national tenants refused to relocate without financial concessions and simply closed their stores.

That left the majority of the lower level of the building abandoned. Mall management suspended janitorial and maintenance services in the area. Oversight management reopened the lower level; however, more than 50 percent of the store spaces are vacant.

Jackson's Ward 4 Councilman De'Keither Stamps applauded the mall management team's attempts to appeal to the greater Jackson area's Latino population. In fact, he wants to see more grouping of services going forward.

"We don't have centralized services for people," Stamps said. "It's scattered all over town. I think there is opportunity to work with some educational pieces, like a Virginia College-type of business that will create more business around it."

Stamps said he would like to see another piece of property developed in the vicinity. The approximately 60 acres of land along the back side of the mall, opposite the entrance that faces Highway 80, one of Jackson's busiest thoroughfares.

"(The land in the back,) it's just a wooded area," Stamps said. "If we could convince someone to open some kind of attraction there, it would bring the traffic from (U.S. Interstate 220), Highway 80 and Highway 18, some of the busiest roads in Jackson, around the mall."

Part of the land Stamps referenced is among the 45 acres included in the property Overby has listed for sale.