I'd love to see this center comeback someday into a nice retail center, but it won't happen anytime soon, if ever. Looks like a new investor paid a pretty penny for the center. It's nice to see Shepherd Mall holding its value as a business park. At least it's not sitting half vacant like Heritage Park Mall.

I do think it may be time for a name change though....how about Shepherd Office Park????? Keeping mall in the name is confusing for visitors.

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"L.A. investor pays $48.5 M for Shepherd Mall
by Brian Brus
The Journal Record
6/14/2005


The new owners of Shepherd Mall, formerly one of Oklahoma City's oldest retail landmarks, plan to maintain its current use as an office complex, property management spokesman Craig Walsh said.
The 636,471-square-foot mall sold to a Los Angeles investor for $48.5 million Friday, public records show. Former co-owner Jim Williams confirmed the sale but would not discuss other details of the deal.

"It was a nice price," Williams said. He held the property for 11 years with partners John Bridwell and the late Dale Garrett. "We enjoyed owning the mall."

Walsh, a vice president with Standard Management Co. in Los Angeles, said he has been researching potential replacement restaurant tenants. Furr's cafeteria, near the east end of the mall on NW 23rd, closed two years ago.

"It's basically an office park at this point, and there are some restaurant uses in the facility," Walsh said.

Appropriately enough, Walsh used to live in Oklahoma City in the 1970s and '80s just before the mall began its decline and lost its major retail anchors.

"With the recent vacancy of a sit-down restaurant, we have not yet determined if that's the highest or best use of that space at this time," he said. "But if a restaurant should be interested and we determine that's best, then, yeah, we would be interested in a restaurant."

Otherwise, he said, the mall's current use will not change: "I think that's been a very successful path, and it's something the new ownership fully intends to continue with."

The 44.48-acre mall has been operating at near 90 percent occupancy, Williams said. He would not discuss the lease price per square foot.

The Oklahoma County Assessor's Office showed the market value at $18.16 million.

Mall manager Ed Duclos said he was told about the sale by the new owner, whom he identified as VTA Oklahoma City LLC, but as of Monday had not yet been given any details of the transfer or plans for the mall.

Williams identified the buyer as Alan Robbins, who likely would not alter the mall's function.

"I think it's just an investment for him," Williams said.

Robbins, a former California state senator, could not be reached for comment.

Constructed in 1964, Shepherd Mall was the first enclosed retail mall built in Oklahoma City. It thrived with anchors J.C. Penney, TG&Y and Dillard's, and a three-story Sears store just a block away on 23rd Street. However, as Penn Square Mall evolved less than 10 miles away at the intersection of Northwest Expressway and Interstate 44, Shepherd's customer traffic fell. The major stores began closing and Shepherd Mall was left a ghost town.

Management began transitioning the mall to office space in the 1990s, but the real boost came from hundreds of displaced workers from downtown when the Murrah Building was bombed in 1995. Several of those temporary tenants remained, including the Social Security Administration, and the mall's former store faces were filled out with wall construction. "