A New York-based real estate lending company says it plans to foreclose on the Lloyd Center mall and redevelop the Northeast Portland shopping center, the Oregonian reported. KKR Real Estate Finance Trust said that it plans to take ownership of the 1.2 million square foot mall before the end of the year. The company says payments on its $110 million debt has been overdue since October 2020. KKR loaned $177 million toward a renovation of the Lloyd Center in 2015. Lloyd Center opened in 1960 as a 100-store, open-air mall, said at the time to be the largest in the world. It was covered in the 1980s with a glass ceiling, then extensively renovated in the 1990s into a more traditional enclosed shopping mall with a central food court. The mall launched another ambitious renovation in 2014, spending tens of millions to refresh the mall’s interior. The mall has nonetheless struggled to turn things around. Major tenants left — including Nordstrom in 2015, Sears and Marshalls in 2018 and Macy’s earlier this year — and shopping traffic continued to decline. Plans to pivot to an entertainment district, complete with a bowling alley and concert venue, never materialized.
