Niagara Factory Outlet Mall offers to buy mobile home park

By Richard E. Baldwin - NEWS NIAGARA REPORTER

TOWN OF NIAGARA—The new owners of the former Niagara Factory Outlet Mall on Military Road have offered to buy the nearby Sabre Park mobile home development, Sabre Park tenants were notified Monday.

The mobile home development is in a foreclosure proceeding over its mortgage of more than $6 million.

Jason Daack, regional manager of the company that is managing Sabre Park for a receiver in the foreclosure process, stressed that no tenants have been asked to move out and that other potential buyers have shown an interest in continuing to operate the property as a “manufactured home park,” or trailer park.

In addition, he said, the tenants may have the right to form a homeowners association and to buy the property themselves on the same terms as the offer from the owners of the shopping outlet mall.

If the mall owners are successful in buying the property, they do not intend to operate it as a trailer park, and the tenants eventually would have to move out, Daack said, but that decision may be many months away.

The prospective purchaser hopes to close the deal by Sept. 1, “but nobody is being asked to move by Sept.1,” the regional manager told The Buffalo News.

The present owner of the property is listed as Sabre Park Associates LLC. A telephone number provided for the owner’s attorney in Rochester was busy Monday afternoon, and nobody else could be reached to speak for Sabre Park Associates.

Daack’s company, Mobile Home Parks, has no ownership interest in the property and is merely managing it for the owner during the current mortgage foreclosure process. He said Mobile Home Parks also operates other similar properties, none of them in Western New York.

He confirmed Monday that notices were being delivered to each of the homes to inform the tenants of the potential sale. He said the park has 214 occupied sites, each of them renting for about $360 a month. He said the occupants own their own trailers or “manufactured homes,” and they pay rent for the space that they occupy in Sabre Park.

The park entrance is off Factory Outlet Boulevard (formerly Third Avenue), near the rear of the Fashion Outlets of Niagara Falls. The outlet complex often is better recognized by its former names: Niagara Factory Outlet Mall or Niagara Factory Outlets.

Once owned by Benderson Development Co. of Buffalo, the outlet mall was sold last month to Macerich Co., a real estate investment trust with headquarters in Santa Monica, Calif., for $200 million.