End of a second era
Shepherd Mall, Oklahoma City’s first enclosed shopping mall, repurposed as an office complex after retail moved away, is looking for another fresh start:
VTA Oklahoma City LLC, the owner of Shepherd Mall, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization Wednesday.
VTA paid $48.5 million for the mall in June of 2005. The bankruptcy petition lists estimated assets at a range of $50 million to $100 million, with $10 million to $50 million in liabilities.
In its prime, Shepherd Mall, founded in 1964, was anchored by Dillard’s, JCPenney and TG&Y; I remember being duly impressed with it when I first saw it in the middle 1970s. By comparison, Penn Square, an open-air center two miles to the north, was pretty much old hat, despite some tricky bits of design. But in 1986, Penn Square was sold, and the new owners put millions into enclosing the entire center. Two years later, the new Penn Square Mall was a showplace — it still is — and Shepherd Mall, already somewhat in decline, spiraled downward. The owners astutely managed the conversion to an office complex; there’s even a charter school at the east end. VTA, headed by former California state senator Alan Robbins, kept the place up, but evidently not enough to stay in the black.
