Bangor has housing ambitions for its ‘dead’ mall. The owner won’t pick up the phone.

The struggling Bangor Mall is at the center of the city’s renewed ambitions to increase housing units, but officials say they can’t get in touch with the company that owns it.

The mall’s commercial area was rezoned in 2022 to open up avenues for development . City officials hoped that would pave the way for a mix of commercial and residential uses for some of the mall’s sprawling, empty spaces, but those plans have not progressed at all.

“It’s private property, so we’re trying to contact [the owners] to get them interested in looking at different objectives to the mall,” said Anne Krieg, Bangor’s director of planning and development. “They have maintained thus far that they still see it as retail and continue to lease it that way.”

Namdar Realty Group LLC, the company that owns and manages the mall, is based in Great Neck, New York, and purports itself to be “the biggest buyer of malls and shopping centers in the U.S.” on its social media . Namdar, which owns 371 properties in 36 states, bought the mall along with two other investors in 2019 for $12.6 million, well below its assessed value.

In part because Namdar is not based in Maine and owns so many malls, Krieg said the company has been impossible to contact. A representative from Namdar could not be reached for comment on this story.

As of 2021, more than 20 spaces in the mall were not being leased , and Krieg said the city would be interested in making improvements to the mall and the area around it.

The city’s housing authority would be interested to see more housing around Stillwater Avenue, where the Bangor Mall is located, Mike Myatt, BangorHousing’s executive director, said. Its proximity to hospitals, schools and retailers makes it a prime opportunity for development, he said.

“Some of our largest employers in our region are on that side of the city without a ton of additional housing that’s close by,” Myatt said. “We’ve wanted to do something on that side of town for a long time.”

Across the country — and now in Kittery — shopping areas are being repurposed as housing opportunities because traditional inventory is low and e-commerce is booming . All of this is true in Bangor, where there is a “strong market” for senior and workforce housing, Myatt said.

Not everyone thinks converting the Bangor Mall into housing is a good idea. Kathy Harvey, owner of Furniture, Mattresses & More, which is now an anchor of the mall’s campus, said business owners chose the mall because it was a retail space and would rather see it torn down and converted into a strip than into housing.

“The mall is dead. My true opinion is they need to tear it down, because we don’t have the proper septic to put housing in here,” Harvey said. “This is not a housing area, this is truly a retail area and it should be done as retail.”

Business owners are hoping that the mall’s vacant storefronts will be filled by productive businesses, rather than apartments, to drive more shoppers back to the mall again, Harvey said. She added that she’s never had a problem getting in touch with a representative at Namdar, and is in regular contact with them about lawn-care issues and her yearly craft fair.

The city has had no such luck.

“We would love to try to work with them to make some improvements or connect them with other developers that might be interested in doing other things,” Krieg said. “But ultimately, it’s their choice as property owners.”