The location is top-notch, at the intersection of Routes 146, 116 and 295, with fast-growing suburbs all around, and major employers at a stone’s throw in any direction: Amica Insurance, Fidelity Investments, A.T. Cross, Bank of America.
Yet for more than a decade, the Lincoln Mall struggled, its anchor stores going bankrupt, its smaller tenants fleeing to healthier venues, its neighbors finding somewhere else to shop.
ISO 9001:2026: A Practical Opportunity to Build for What’s Next
For Rhode Island manufacturers, ISO 9001 has been much more than a certificate on the…
Learn More
In the three years since Bryn Mawr, Pa.-based WP Realty took over, however, the Lincoln Mall has been reborn – so dramatically, in fact, that Town Administrator Sue Sheppard calls the property’s resurrection from the “big-box mall grave” nothing short of “astonishing.”
With a new 14-screen Cinema World theater, a bustling new Chili’s restaurant, and a parking lot full of shoppers seeking out Target, Marshall’s shoe outlet, and other retail destinations, the Lincoln mall is a hot property again. So it’s being sold.
WP Realty officials in Pennsylvania refused to be interviewed for this story, and they wouldn’t allow Donna R. Begin, the mall’s manager, speak to PBN. But Sheppard said title searches and other pre-sale paperwork are being done at Town Hall.
And Charles Chin, owner of the Asia Grille at the mall, said “I don’t think it’s a big secret” that the mall is for sale. “The prospective owners have conducted a series of interviews with the tenants,” he said, and certificates of occupancy and other documents are being looked up.
“Why does anybody do that? It’s a prelude to selling the place,” Chin said. “But it’s done in real estate all the time,” he added. “A developer seems to turn a place around, and then they look to extract a premium for their work.”
In fact, WP Realty’s record in the last seven years has been to buy and keep some properties, and sell others to generate more funds for additional acquisitions. Its Web site, www.wprealty.com, currently lists 35 properties from Maine to Maryland, including 13 in Pennsylvania. Most are shopping plazas; the rest are malls and apartment buildings.
With all its acquisitions, WP Realty says, its strategy is to buy assets from “distressed sellers” at prices “substantially below” market value or replacement cost, or to buy assets that “do not attract the attention of the larger real estate funds and institutions because of their size.” Then, drawing on its strong contacts and expertise, the company turns the properties around.
But whatever Lincoln Mall’s future, WP Realty has already made its mark on the 560,000-square-foot complex, which it bought for $28 million, when the mall was nearly 40 percent vacant and was losing one of its main anchors, Kmart, to a bankruptcy.
WP Realty started by “de-malling” the mall – shifting its orientation outward, more like a shopping center. It recruited Target to take over Kmart’s space, spruced up the entire property inside and out, and began filling the vacant spaces. The final touch was the opening last month of the Cinema World theater.
Altogether, including the purchase cost, WP Realty says it has invested $40 million in the property, but it’s now worth $65 million, and 96 percent occupied.
Chin, who had been persuaded by the mall’s previous owner, Providence-based Churchill & Banks, to return to the mall in 2002 after a 15-year absence, said he was “very apprehensive” when WP Realty first came in, but “they were very cordial, very professional. They promised us certain things, and they actually did deliver.”
Chin said he’d always believed the Lincoln Mall should do well, given its location, but he had “quite modest but realistic” expectations when he opened the new Asia Grille. Yet business was good from the start, he said, and “it has increased significantly” since the mall upgrades.
The movie theaters have brought a new late-night crowd, and even Chili’s, kitty-corner from his restaurant, has been “a positive force,” Chin said.
“I know that it has an impact beyond the mall,” said Sheppard, who worked with WP Realty to hold down the mall’s property taxes with a 10-year “stabilization” agreement. “It gives people in northern Rhode Island another opportunity to shop, to go eat. … We don’t have a lot of restaurants in the town of Lincoln.”
Dr. Frank D’Alessandro, owner of
Lincoln Urgent Care Medical Center, directly across Route 116 from the mall entrance, said his own business has benefited from the revitalization. For a long time, he said, the mall looked “like a ghost town,” but in the last year, “we’ve seen a huge increase in traffic,” and “I think it’s helped our exposure in the area.”
It does go both ways, said John C. Gregory, president and CEO of the Northern Rhode Island Chamber of Commerce, which has its offices nearby. From Fidelity Investments to the Blackstone Valley Place office parks to the Bank Rhode Island processing facility, “the whole area has changed,” he said. Thousands of workers now flock into the area every day, and “a lot of us shop where we work.”
“Obviously, success breeds success,” Gregory said. “There’s a lot of activity on Route 116, and certainly for marketing the region, you’d rather show people a vibrant mall than one that was struggling. … This is an exciting time.”
