Maine's Bangor Mall is Being Sued By the City Over Code Issues

Oh, the mall days...

Things are definitely not what they used to be, especially where the Bangor Mall is concerned. I'm old enough to remember when it was literally the center of everything around here. If there was literally nothing else to do, you could literally just go to the mall. Chancer are, you'd run into someone you know.

These days, you can certainly still walk around the mall if you're bored, and elderly folks often do to get exercise, but it won't be the loud, crazy, hustle and bustle it was when I was a teenager. These days, the mall is a crumbling monument to the days of yore, complete with a choose-your-own-adventure Mad Max-style parking lot that requires Dukes of Hazzard driving skills to navigate.

It's bad enough, that the City of Bangor is actually suing the Bangor Mall.

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A company called the Namdar Realty Group. They purchased it back in 2019 for $12 million. The claim/hope was that Namdar would invest in the Mall and do its best to return the Mall closer to its former glory. Instead, one could argue the Mall remains kind of a private joke among the residents of the Greater Bangor area.

Jovanmandic

The city has now filed a lawsuit, citing several code violations surrounding signage, the disaster of a parking lot, and a roof that seems to let more water in, than it keeps out. Several tenants have moved out, all listing these various things as part of their reasons for choosing to leave the Mall.

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How long has this been going on?

Well, it feels like an absolute eternity that the Mall has been the butt of most Bangor jokes. But the city has served the Mall with several notices of all these violations, going back as far as February, and nothing has been done about any of them. Now, the city has filed suit, hoping to force the hands of the owners to address these concerns.

The BDN reached out to the owners, Namdar Realty Group, and no response had come through so far. As far as next steps, that remains to be seen. I doubt we're getting too close to the Mall just being shut down or something, but based on the reports of all the issues the Mall has, it's going to be an uphill battle for all parties.