Jul. 27—Nearly three decades ago, the opening of Cottonwood Mall generated a shopping frenzy, foot traffic and retail promise on Albuquerque’s West Side. But in recent weeks, the mall’s interior provided a different picture.
In visits to the mall, located at 10000 Coors Bypass NW, earlier this month and last week, the Journal found out-of-service escalators, some businesses open and some closed, portable fans galore, employees with sweat on their brow and some with low morale.
The mall’s tenants have been grappling with air conditioning issues that temporarily shuttered the mall in June and remain partially unresolved, though parts of the 1-million-square-foot mall are noticeably cooler than they were three weeks ago.
“We have been working tirelessly to address the situation and HVAC repairs are nearly complete,” said Carmen Spinoso, CEO of Spinoso Real Estate Group, the company responsible for leasing, managing and marketing Cottonwood Mall.
The AC breakdown isn’t the first bump in the road for Cottonwood Mall, which has weathered legal and financial challenges in the past five years.
A court appointed Spinoso Real Estate Group, a New York-based company, as the mall’s receiver — an entity that manages a property during a legal or financial dispute — in 2022, after U.S. Bank National Association filed foreclosure against Cottonwood’s previous owners.
Washington Prime Group, which bought the mall from its original owner in 2014 and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2021, allegedly owed upward of $100 million on its $105 million loan, according to previous Journal reporting.
Spinoso said the company understands the “complexities” of the mall’s history but said the group has “not only stabilized the property but initiated a robust revitalization” since taking over, including new tenants, improved net income and increased foot traffic.
Local real estate experts have a different perspective on how the mall is doing. They said the AC issues are just the tip of the iceberg, compounding a history of struggles and a shifting retail landscape that’s becoming harder to ignore.
“(The mall) hasn’t burned to the ground by any means, but it’s not economically viable. … It is an ongoing concern,” said retail expert Ben Perich, a senior vice president and principal with commercial real estate firm and investment management company Colliers.
In Perich’s view, the mall struggles to retain tenants as increased use of the internet and e-commerce create challenges for brick-and-mortar stores, leading many national retailers to file for bankruptcy.
The exit of bankrupt anchor tenants Sports Authority and Conn’s HomePlus has left Cottonwood Mall with between 15,000 and 84,000 square feet vacant and currently available to lease, according to a listing on Loopnet.
The mall’s existing enclosed, indoor shopping format is also an issue, Perich said. He said malls across the nation are shifting to more of an indoor-outdoor, mixed-use format, similar to what Winrock Town Center is doing. More than 150 American malls had redeveloped or were planning to in 2023, with many integrating housing and other uses into their footprint, according to the Urban Land Institute.
In Spinoso’s view, shaped by 35 years in the real estate business, retailers have been going out of business for years due to new technology, more competition and changing consumer tastes. He said while the internet has been detrimental to some retailers, who he said were likely already declining due to a variety of factors, it’s also been a boost to some businesses, creating what he called “a new breed of stores.”
Colliers’ spring 2025 Retail Report found that physical stores still account for 76% of core retail sales and that the surge of e-commerce has birthed shopping spaces that are “no longer just transactional” but offer consumers “experiences and convenience.”
Which is why Spinoso believes the format of a shopping center — indoor-outdoor versus enclosed — doesn’t matter as much as the tenants and experiences it’s bringing in. As the mixture of tenants improves, so will the mall, he said.
“That’s why leasing is so important,” Spinoso said.
At the end of June, the mall’s occupancy of permanent tenants stood at 66%, which is what the rate has been in two of the last three years, according to monthly financial reports Spinoso Real Estate Group filed with the 2nd Judicial District Court as required by a receivership order in the ongoing U.S. Bank case.
The mall’s total occupancy — including permanent and temporary tenants — increased from 88% last June to 93% this June.
The mall’s foot traffic has held steady, Spinoso said, with customer visits up 2%, or about 100,000 people, over last year. Net income has also been on an incline the last three years, with the mall raking in about $1.4 million more in net income so far this year compared to June 2022, according to the financial reports. The company reported $3.5 million year-to-date net income last month.
The mall’s value, however, has taken a hit in recent years. It was appraised at $4.8 million in 2024 and $3.8 million in 2025, according to documents provided to the Journal by the Bernalillo County Assessor’s Office.
Shopping centers in the Cottonwood trade area are “performing extremely well” on all fronts, Perich said. He estimated the vacancy rate for the trade area overall — encompassing a triangle of shopping space enclosed by Coors Bypass, Coors Boulevard and Alameda Boulevard NW — to be about 2%.
“Pretty much every time a space becomes available, somebody else steps in and leases it at a bigger, increased rent, except for at the mall. It’s kind of a tale of two cities,” Perich said. “If there’s a story to Cottonwood, it’s not that the mall is in a failing part of town. In fact, it’s a very successful part of town. It’s just the wrong product type.”
The mall’s recent leasing efforts have brought in some fresh tenants, like national pickleball franchise The Picklr and Reliable Nissan.
Some restaurant development is also picking up in and around the mall, including the recent opening of Bubba’s 33. A new restaurant called Black Sheep Korean BBQ & Hot Pot is under construction at the mall, and In-N-Out Burger is looking at potentially setting up a restaurant nearby.
Potential for more
Perich said these are exactly the kinds of developments that need to take place, but he thinks even more drastic changes are needed, such as deconstructing and repositioning the mall.
He also suggested other uses, like multifamily housing, gyms, offices or grocery stores. Spinoso said other uses like housing are a possibility.
Such changes would require an investment of up to hundreds of millions of dollars, Perich said, plus the right owner and timing. He’s optimistic, but the shifting demands of the retail market can only be ignored for so long, he said.
The mall is not currently available for purchase, but it could be someday, Spinoso said. The purpose of the receivership, he said, is to stabilize the property and restore as much value as possible “so that the greatest recovery could be made on the loan” through selling the property.
Spinoso said it is possible his company could be the one to purchase the mall, something it has done before, but it’s too soon to determine the probability of that. He added the end date of the receivership is unknown and will be decided by the manager of a trust that represents the people and entities that invested into the mall’s loan.
Until then, Spinoso said his company “has and will continue to make substantial capital investments” into the mall, citing the HVAC upgrades, which the company forecasted to cost $1.5 million in its June financial report filed on Monday.
“We’re incredibly optimistic about the current trajectory of Cottonwood Mall,” Spinoso said. “Our message to anyone concerned about Cottonwood Mall’s fate is one of unwavering confidence and a clear commitment to its future.”
