After a few turbulent years that have seen almost a dozen store closures, Chatham's shopping mall is reverting back to its former owners.
The Downtown Chatham Centre (DCC) has changed ownership again after being reacquired by Touchstone Group Ltd. of Toronto as of August 1, following several years under the management of Goldberg Groups of Hamilton.
Touchstone bought the Downtown Chatham Centre in 2016 from the Warrener family.
Touchstone lawyer Mathew Moyal told Blackburn News on Tuesday the Downtown Chatham Centre is not closing and financial restructuring is underway with the banks. Moyal also denied Touchstone Group is looking to sell the mall. He said they have to sort through the former owner's mortgage after he defaulted and would have more concrete news in about two months.
"Rome wasn't built in a day," Moyal added.
The now-former general manager, Kazafi Basra, had no comment when contacted by Blackburn News and directed all questions to Touchstone Group.
Lynn O'Brien, who was the general manager at the mall before Goldberg Groups took over, is back and has resumed her position.
It's been a rocky road for the Downtown Chatham Centre over the last few years under Goldberg Groups. Several stores and services have left the mall including Sears, Peoples Jewellers, Coles, and Suzy Shier just to name a few. However, Basra previously told Blackburn News that the closures were corporate decisions made by those businesses and it had nothing to do with the mall or its management.
In 2019, Basra said he was trying his best to remodel the mall and there were a number of projects still coming down the pipeline for the DCC, but ultimately didn’t elaborate on what those projects were
The Downtown Chatham Centre has also suffered from accessibility troubles in the past due to the closure of Sears back in late 2017, which housed the only elevator to the mall’s second floor. While the doors to the empty store were reopened by management for a period of time to allow elevator access, the former Sears store was again closed off due to fire code violations.
More recently, the mall's escalators have been out of order for at least the last eight months.
Currently, the mall's second floor sits mostly empty and there are a few open stores on the main floor.