Metro Detroit's struggling Eastland Center shopping mall will be auctioned off next month and potentially shut down and demolished in the future, the city of Harper Woods announced Monday.

Nearly all of the enclosed mall — 640,000 square feet — will be up for grabs at the two-day online auction set to begin at noon Oct. 9, with the exception of the former Macy's and Target stores, which are individually owned. Bidding is to start at $500,000 and conclude by early afternoon Oct. 11.

Eastland mall has been in a downward spiral for years and lost all of its former department store anchors, including Sears, Macy's and Burlington. It is down to just two larger-footprint tenants — Shoppers World and K&G Fashion Superstore — and most remaining tenants are local businesses and lower-end national retailers.

"I hope the mall stays open," said Eastland tenant Wissam Sweidan, 45, of Dearborn Heights, whose sportswear store recently signed a new five-year lease.

The October auction was called by the mall's "special servicer," Maryland-based CWCapital, which has been in charge of the property since 2016, after Eastland's owner, Ashkenazy Acquisition, was foreclosed on for defaulting on the mall's commercial mortgage.

The city of Harper Woods wants to partner with the winner of the auction in a potential redevelopment of the mall site.

City officials have proposed a public/private partnership for a mixed-use project at the site that would include a new City Hall and Police Department, along with a hotel, outdoor amphitheater, new retail shops and as many as 680 apartments and row houses.

That redevelopment would involve tearing down most of the existing mall, but keeping the surrounding businesses that are still open, such as Lowe's and Home Depot.

“I don’t see how in this day and age someone can breathe life into the mall as it currently stands," Harper Woods City Manager Joseph Rheker said Monday.

The auction winner will also likely acquire ownership of the artwork inside the mall, including a hippo sculpture and the Marshall Fredericks piece "The Lion and the Mouse," he said. The city would like to preserve those pieces if possible, he said.

“There was a time when this site was the pride of Harper Woods, a destination for visitors, and a focus of community pride. We’re determined to see this vital property return to that status," Harper Woods Mayor Ken Poynter said in a statement.

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Eastland has been the scene of parking lot muggings and occasional shootings through the years, which hastened the mall's decline. The incidents included a December 2015 execution-style killing of a 16-year-old youth by another teenager outside the now-closed Burlington store.

Opened in 1957, Eastland was part of a group of shopping centers built and managed by J.L. Hudson. It was originally planned as suburban Detroit's first major shopping mall, but construction was delayed by a steel shortage brought on by the Korean War.

Its 1954 predecessor, Northland Center mall in Southfield, suffered its own long decline and closed in 2015. The city of Southfield purchased that vacant mall, which still stands empty.

Eastland is Harper Woods' largest source of tax revenue. The mall's last significant renovation was in 1993 and its downturn has resulted in a roughly $2 million revenue drop for the city since 2014.

Harper Woods is not in a financial position to buy Eastland, which Southfield was able to do for Northland, Rheker said.

Representatives for CWCapital, which ordered the auction, declined to answer questions or comment.

CWCapital has been legally prohibited from making improvements to the mall property under rules governing a complex tax arrangement at the site, Rheker said.

Harper Woods previously considered relocating its City Hall into Eastland's empty Sears, but dropped that idea for financial reasons related to leasing rather than owning the proposed site.

A more recent proposal by a private company to convert the former four-story Macy's store into self-storage units was thwarted by a new city zoning restriction for such storage facilities, Rheker said.

“It was an undesirable use," he said. “We had a feeling that it was more of a speculative move on the behalf of the potential purchaser.”

The city is unaware of any restriction in next month's auction that would prohibit the winner from continuing to operate Eastland as an enclosed shopping mall.

“It’s going to be the decision of the new owner," Rheker said. “If someone has the magic solution to breathe life into that mall, fantastic, but I think that’s a far stretch."

Contact JC Reindl: 313-222-6631 or jcreindl@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @JCReindl.