Home Care In Bossier City, LA

The weekly Bossier Farmers Market and quarterly Night Market draw thousands to Pierre Bossier Mall. For 10 years, market owner Chris Graham has used the mall’s south parking lot for his events, which continue to grow. He says the most recent Night Market, a Mardi Gras-themed event in February, attracted 10,000 shoppers.

Inside the mall, things are different.

Sears, one of the three anchor stores, filed bankruptcy and closed in 2018. Anchors J.C. Penney and Dillard’s still draw shoppers, but over the years, the number of smaller retailers filling space in the mall between them has continued to fall.

When the mall was built in the late 1970s, roughly 100 retail spaces were available. Today, 31 stores are listed on the mall’s website.

One is Drew Brees’ Surge Entertainment, a child-friendly venue with an arcade and laser tag, food, and alcoholic beverages for adults. Another is Forever 21, a clothing store for younger shoppers that recently filed for bankruptcy and will soon be closing. Several of the 31 spots are kiosks, the small booths that populate the mall concourse.

In 1999, Pierre Bossier Mall paid $294,000 in property taxes, according to the Bossier Tax Assessor. By 2017, the taxes had dropped to $203,000. This year, says assessor Bobby Edmiston, the taxes will be $125,760.

The property taxes for 2024 have not yet been paid. Until mall owner Kohan Retail Investment Group of Great Neck, New York, pays its bill, the property “belongs” to Bossier Parish. Kohan Retail is also the owner of Shreveport's Mall St. Vincent.

Police Jury Administrator Ken Ward says the parish does not want to own a mall.

“We haven't had any discussion one way or another about it," Ward said. “Honestly, we're in hopes that someone may actually redeem it and pay the back tax on it.”

Online documents show the company did not pay 2023 taxes on the Central Mall in Port Arthur, Texas. Multiple years of property taxes were unpaid at Michigan’s Midland Mall.

In the Orlando, Florida, area, the electricity was shut off at the Seminole Town Center for nonpayment, and 2024 property taxes were unpaid. At the Westwood Mall in Marquette Township, Michigan, 2022 property taxes were paid on the March 31, 2025, deadline to prevent a foreclosure. The 2023 taxes are still unpaid.

All of these were, and most still are, Kohan properties.

Kohan Investment owner Mike Kohan has not responded to Shreveport-Bossier Advocate requests for an interview.

Kohan’s group purchased Pierre Bossier Mall in 2022 for $15.14 million.

The mall’s appraised value in 2022 was $7.5 million, says Orest Mandzy, the managing editor of commercial real estate direct for Trepp Inc., a leading provider of data and analytics for the commercial real estate and banking markets.

Mandzy says the capitalization rate, a way to measure the potential rate of return on an investment property, was 15.52%. According to Mandzy, cap rates in the mid-teens are generally tied to “speculative properties.”

Mandzy says possible return can be calculated by looking at the number of five-year leases.

“If I've got 100 tenants, and each one of them has a lease that runs for another five years, I'm going to be able to get this much rental income over these five years,” Mandzy said.

If no money is taken out for upgrades, even a mall with lower occupancy can make money.

Bossier City Chief Administrative Officer Amanda Nottingham says the city is very aware of the situation with Pierre Bossier Mall. She says she is often asked about the mall and given advice about what might work there, but so far no one interested in buying or redeveloping it has approached the city.

“If somebody comes through looking for property, you know if the mall would be a potential fit, it is something that I always try to bring up and encourage them to look into,” she said.

She has also thought about what might work there. Nottingham believes a conversion to entrepreneurial spaces or office space might work. She says there is value in the infrastructure that already exists at the mall, especially given the cost of new construction.

Luxury malls featuring Prada, Chanel and other high-end retailers are thriving in a number of cities. In Louisiana, New Orleans’ Canal Place and Lakeside Shopping Center in Metairie have very few vacancies and lots of luxe options.

Midlevel malls that may not have access to large numbers of high-net-worth shoppers are trying other things, Mandzy said. He says malls that lose an anchor have an even tougher time.

“Some mall operators are bringing in sort of entertainment venues, like bowling alleys. I think it's too early to tell whether they're drawing as much foot traffic as the, you know, the conventional department store,” Mandzy said.

He says another mall in Pennsylvania brought in a popular Wegman’s Food Market. Though the grocery store did well, he says the concept was unsuccessful because people did not go to the mall after shopping for food. Ultimately, he says, the mall owner, Simon Property Group, let its $100 million mall mortgage default to the lender.

The Oxford Valley Mall in New Jersey teamed up with multifamily developers to create apartments on the mall property. “What's going to happen to the rest of the mall remains to be seen. But that's one option. We've also seen malls get flipped inside out, but those are fewer and far between,” Mandzy said.

Flipping the mall “inside out” is redeveloping it entirely and flipping the store facades to face the parking lot. At other malls, closed anchor stores have been converted into self-storage or warehouse space.

Overall, retail is thriving and looking for space

“The broader dynamic is very little retail space has been built over the past, I'm going to say three to five years. So the retail sector in the country is doing phenomenally well,” Mandzy said.

One of the reasons malls are having trouble is that they were overbuilt," he said.

“By the early 2000s, we had something like 1,500 shopping malls in the country and we probably only needed, I don't know, less than 1000," Mandzy said. "And remember, we don't have the anchors that we had anymore, right?”

“Why did developers build the malls that they built in the locations they did?” Mandzy asked. “Because they were at crossroads. They were prime real estate. So that real estate is really going to ultimately be very valuable. Someone's got to do something with them, and someone's got to effectively make a bet on something.”

Chris Graham of the Bossier Farmers Market says the local staff works hard with what they have.

“You know, the problem isn't the local management,” Graham said. “They are wonderful. They're hard working. They actually care.

“The mall has a lot of potential. It's a lot of space, and they're definitely willing to make some deals to get new businesses in there right now.”

Mandzy hopes for the best for Pierre Bossier, but any optimism is tempered.

“I've yet to see any of the malls that Kohan has acquired be turned around dramatically. It's oftentimes they're kind of like they're just left there to die,” Mandzy said.

Email Liz Swaine at [email protected].