‘Another bill not paid’: Towne West mall remains open as water is turned off

Towne West Mall was open Wednesday despite not having running water in the mall itself.

The water outage comes days after the mall reopened its doors after owners got power restored by paying a past due bill, which has happened several times. In past outages, the mall stayed open. This time, it, closed to customers for multiple days at the end of March.

The mall’s water was turned off at 9:15 a.m. Wednesday, according to city spokesperson Megan Lovely, who said it’s been turned off before for lack of payment between Dec. 11 to Dec. 14 and for a few hours on April 2.

“While we refrain from giving out account holder information, we can say that staff has tried working with the owner and giving them extensive grace before reaching this point,” Lovely said in an email.

As during past power outages, anchor stores of Dick’s Sporting Goods, JCPenney and Dillard’s Clearance Center were all open and had their water on because they are on their own meters, according to store employees.

New-York based Kohan Retail Investment Group bought the struggling mall in 2019 along with Florida-based 4th Dimension Properties. Mike Kohan is the managing member of the Kohan group. He did not respond to a text Wednesday — nor has he replied when recent power outages happened.

Passageways, which helps homeless veterans and has a location at the mall, posted on Facebook just before 9 a.m. Wednesday about the water being turned off.

“Water is being turned off at Towne West as we type this,” the nonprofit wrote. “Kohan strikes again. Another bill not paid.”

4th Dimension Properties did respond to an email about the power outage last month, saying they hadn’t been owners of the mall “for a long time.”

The company had the mall listed as one of its properties on its website when the power outages first started last year but has since removed the property.