Bidding for Sears store at Meriden Mall reach $1.25M in auction

MERIDEN — The auction of a vacant Sears department store and automotive center at the Meriden Mall began this week with bidding reaching $1.25 million as of Tuesday.

After a minimum starting bid of $750,000, the property received bids of $1 million and $1.25 million Monday afternoon, according to the commercial real estate exchange website Crexi, which is hosting the auction.

Bidding ends Wednesday at noon.

The 120,096-square-foot former anchor store and stand-alone former auto center sit on 7.8 acres and have been vacant for more than five years. It is owned by TF Meriden CT, part of a Sears real estate investment firm in Hoffman Estates, Illinois. According to city property records, the building is appraised at $2.1 million.

Scott Black, of Atlantic Retail in Massachusetts, is the listing contact for the Sears property. According to the Atlantic Retail website, Black has worked with many large-format retailers, including Lowe’s Home Improvement, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Whole Foods Market, Kohl’s and Topgolf.

Black is currently involved with the disposition of various Sears properties, as well as the former Neiman Marcus in Natick, Mass.

The collapse of big-box retail has put other former Sears stores on the auction block recently as mall owners struggle to find tenants in need of large space or a developer who wants to subdivide. The remainder of the Meriden Mall is separately owned by Namdar Realty.

The value of the mall property has plummeted in recent years.

Since 2020, the primary mall property on Lewis Avenue has slid from second place on the list of top taxpayers in Meriden to number eight.

Once valued at more than $80 million, the mall sold in 2020 for just $12.5 million.

In May 2023, a deal to sell the former Sears at the Crystal Mall in Waterford for a bid of $3.97 million fell through and the former anchor store returned to the auction block in September, according to CT Insider.

ACHS Management Corp.’s 350 Hartford Turnpike LLC was the winning bidder for the Waterford Sears during the second auction. The company paid $2.78 million for the 10.62 acre property and 150,632 building, which had been owned by Seritage Growth Properties.

Sears was the second anchor store in the Meriden Mall to close, followed by Macy’s. JCPenney led the exodus in 2017. The city’s mall has fared better than some others in the state because Boscov’s replaced JCPenney and Yale New Haven Health bought the Macy’s building to convert it to a medical treatment and office building.

City officials are awaiting the redevelopment of the former Macy’s.

Joseph Feest, Meriden’s economic development director, told CT Insider last month that while contractors working for Yale New Haven Health have done the interior demolition work on the former department store, the interior work creating the medical space has not started.

“That is a key to saving our mall,” Feest said of the health care facility. “It will bring people to the mall that are not coming there now.”

The Macy’s in the Meriden Mall closed in March 2020. That closure came 14 months after Sears closed.

“That has had a huge impact over the years since then,” Feest said of the closures. “Young people used to be able to get jobs at the mall. Now they don’t need as many people.”

Smaller recreational users, such as pickleball operators, have also revived former big boxes to diversify appeal and some towns and cities are changing zoning laws to allow apartments.