City Place Mall is home to many women's clothing stores, and not much else. (Photo: TBD Staff)

The company that acquired City Place Mall earlier this month isn’t offering up many details on what plans it has for the depressed mall. Petrie Ross Ventures owned the mall and will manage the property since the Hutensky Group acquired the debt-ridden mall for $22.8 million.

Hutensky vice president of acquisitions Veronique V. Longo offered vague statements on the company’s plans, such as “we are working with Petrie Ross to come up with what we believe to be a viable redevelopment plan. We just started the process, so there is no specific timetable we’ve assigned.”

Turning around a mall that changed hands just two years ago isn’t simple, but this kind of work is nothing new for Hutensky. The company has bought two other depressed-commercial properties in Maryland in the past 10 years: the Lutherville Station for $30.75 million, and the Catonsville Plaza Shopping Center for $19.8 million.

Teal Cary is the executive director of the Greater Catonsville Chamber of Commerce and recalls what east Catonsville's 35-year-old shopping center once was like.

“It had a Kmart that closed, and just some run-down businesses,” Cary recalled. “When the new tenants came in, they did, they completely redid the facades of a lot of the buildings. It’s an attractive shopping center. It’s clean and well-kept.”

Hutensky has attracted new tenants to the shopping center: U.S. Armed Forces, Bank of America, Foreman Mills, and Shopper’s Food Warehouse have moved in. A Planet Fitness gym opened about a year ago and attracts a lot of people to the shopping center. Cary says that Hutensky has engaged in marketing to attract customers from west Catonsville to patronize the shopping center located on Catonsville's east side.

View Larger Map

The story for Silver Spring is a little different: there is a solid customer base patronizing outdoor stores, but few enter the mall. Some shopkeepers blame the lack of retail diversity in the mall, among other problems, and residents have called for higher-end retailers.

Longo did say the company heard plenty from the community about their new purchase, “and we certainly appreciate it.”

“We are sensitive to the property and what’s been going on there, so we will certainly communicate when have something to talk about,” Longo says.