COLUMBUS, OH-Morris Capital Partners is spending about $17 million to literally reopen a closed indoor mall, including the purchase of the troubled Shops at Worthington Place mall here out of foreclosure. The property is about 50% occupied with anchors such as Talbot’s, Chicos and Jos. A. Bank, as well as a shadow anchor Kroger.

Metropolitan Capital Advisors, a Dallas-based firm, arranged the loan to buy the property from lender GE Properties for about $6 million and the $11 million plan to tear off most of the roof to provide a more-open air setting again. Todd McNeill, a senior director with MCA, says the 127,000-square-foot indoor mall was developed as an outdoor center in 1972, was roofed over in the mid-1980s and lost about half its occupancy after a failed mixed-use project from the previous owner.

“The mall and its tenants were doing very well after the new roof. Then the Stanford University Endowment fund bought the property, with a vision of adding some condos and apartments,” McNeill tells GlobeSt.com. The new owner let leases on the north side of the mall expire, where the condos were going to be built, but then the economy crashed and the company couldn’t get financing for its plan in 2008. The occupancy dropped to about half while the foreclosure went through.

McNeill says there’s a ton of interest by numerous tenants to sign up at the new mall, which should by open by this time next year. “The existing tenants do extremely well, daily traffic counts exceed 200,000 cars at the location at the southwest corner of Interstate 270 and High Street. The mall just got caught in the downturn,” he says.