SYRACUSE, NY – Destiny USA is New York’s largest shopping mall, a six-story structure at Onondaga Lake. Its attraction is WonderWorks, a 40,000-square-foot theme park where children can experience a simulated earthquake, wear spaceflight with an astronaut suit or play with a laser plate.
They can, that is, until the state closes many of the attractions for the second time in November last year to counter Covid-19. Only 18% of the space rented to tenants for entertainment is currently open, says a spokesman for the mall’s owner, Pyramid Management Cos.
The addition of theme park-like attractions was a strategy that Pyramid considered crucial to attracting foot traffic and curbing the years-long battle of online shopping malls. The strategy now looks less like a lifeline and more like a millstone.
Although new pandemic stores have reopened the mall’s stores, many of its entertainment attractions have closed. Pyramid, which is privately owned, has borrowed heavily to build extensions for extra entertainment at Destiny USA and another shopping center, Palisades Center in West Nyack, NY, and the bills have to be paid.
In April, the Pyramid entities operating the two shopping malls owed security debt called commercial mortgage-backed securities, or CMBS, according to real estate provider Trepp LLC, which is finally negotiating extensions and deferrals.