Beleaguered Dauphin County mall is up for auction

The Colonial Park Mall is headed for the auction block.

The mall, located at 4600 Jonestown Road in Lower Paxton Township, is up for auction on the commercial real estate website, Ten-X.

The starting bid is at $2.1 million and the auction will take place from June 25-27.

The 344,421-square-foot mall was built in 1960, renovated in 1990, is at 29% capacity and has 3,678 parking spaces, according to the listing.

The owner of the shopping center is Kohan Retail Investment Group, which purchased it in 2017. The mall has about 33 occupants, down from about 39 last February, and more than 43 vacancies. Earlier this year, Rue21 and Colonial Park Cinemas 4 closed, and Spencer’s has relocated.

The buildings that house Boscov’s, the former Sears store, the former Sears Auto location, the former Enterprise location, Red Lobster, Longhorn Steakhouse and Mountz Jewelers aren’t owned by Kohan Retail and aren’t part of the auction.

Last year, Maryland developer Stonewall Capital, signed an agreement to purchase the Colonial Park Mall and confirmed plans to create a mixed-use community that would include retail, restaurants, apartments, for-sale condo units, a medical office building and a hotel. But in July, Stonewall Capital terminated its sales agreement to buy the mall.

That same month, the mall avoided a sheriff’s sale just 25 minutes before a deadline by paying a $319,539.06 bill to the Lower Paxton Township Authority for unpaid sewer and stormwater bills.

In 2020, Lower Paxton Township adopted the Towne Center zoning district to facilitate “walkable, livable, and attractive mixed-use development centers of a sustainable density to create a sense of place”. The zoning ordinance was passed by the Lower Paxton Township board of supervisors the next year for the Colonial Park Mall and several nearby properties. The town center zoning district allows for things like upscale housing, a mix of certain retail uses and professional office uses, hotels, galleries, museums, theaters, restaurants, indoor sports facilities, and health clubs, among other uses.