Twin Peaks Mall sells for fire-sale price

It’s a sign of just how crappy your mall is when it sells for less than some homes in your community. That’s the case with Longmont’s Twin Peaks mall, an echoey, crumbling “retail hub” that’s half empty and in foreclosure. On Feb. 6, the mall sold for $8.5 million to a California-based retail development company, NewMark Merrill. That’s far less than the $26 million owed to Bank of America by the former owner, and less even than some residential homes for sale in Longmont, such as a 5,000-plus square-foot home on Rozena Drive selling for $12 million and a 4,500-square-foot house on Pike Road listed for $9 million.

In comparison, the mall sits on 75 acres near the prime crossroads of Hover Street and Diagonal Highway and takes up 550,000 square feet. Twin Peaks’ listing on the new owner’s website says it’s home to 40 stores, but the mall’s own website lists only 28.

A story in the Times-Call Wednesday said the new owners hope to “redevelop the property into a thriving retail center, as it once was.” One would hope so, since there’s precious little else to do with it, other than turn it into an indoor paintball arena. But there are bigger plans afoot, with NewMark Merrill planning to spend between $25 million-$50 million facelift as part of a “vibrant and viable redevelopment plan,” according to Allen Ginsborg, the company’s managing partner, in a press release.

Really, there’s nowhere to go but up for this depressing mall, and hopefully the new owners will immediately replace the missing E in the “Twin Peaks” sign facing Hover before they do anything else. The place needs a little bit of pride, at least. That this is lacking is evident from the mall’s abysmal Facebook page, whose maintenance seems to have been assigned to an intern who might have quit just before Christmas, which was the last time it was updated.

Not that those updates amounted to much. Check out the tragi-comic exchange the “mall” had with customers who tried (and failed) to enter an online contest: