Meijer buys Memorial Mall

Meijer Inc., the Michigan-based grocery chain, has purchased Sheboygan's Memorial Mall.

Meijer purchased the mall for $10.75 million, according to a release from Siegel-Gallagher, who represented the former owner in the transaction. The purchase included the Sears building, which has been vacant since the store closed in early 2015 and was purchased at the end of 2014 by NorthStar Realty Finance, which owned the rest of Memorial Mall.

Frank Guglielmi, a spokeman for Meijer, said that the company plans to build one of their grocery stores on a portion of the site -- not the entire site -- but that such a plan is several years away.

"We don't even have a finalized construction timeline, that's how far away we are from the project," Guglielmi said.

For the time being, Meijer has hired another company to manage the mall and residents should expect "business as usual" for the time being, he said.

Memorial Mall has undergone financial distress in the last few years, going into foreclosure in 2011 and more recently suffering the closure of Sears and several smaller businesses in the complex. While the mall was owned by NorthStar Realty Finance since 2011, Siegel-Gallagher was initially the court-appointed receiver of the mall and has been managing the property since 2011.