Local stores at Holiday Village not concerned about mall sale

Editor’s note: This version corrects that Debi Friede is manager of Yummy Foods.

Havre's Holiday Village Shopping Center is up for auction Dec. 4, but tenants said they are not worried about the change.

A public sale notice received and printed by the Havre Daily News says that Jones Lang LaSalle Americas, Inc. on behalf of Colfin Security National Properties Mezz Funding LLC will hold a public auction Dec. 4, 2018. Colfin SNP Mezz Funding is a Delaware limited liability company that owns Louisiana-based Security National Properties Funding IV-Havre LLC, which is the owner of Havre's Holiday Village according to the Montana Cadastral. Security National Properties Funding IV-Havre LLC is one of the 27 Security National Properties being auctioned off across the county.

The Havre Daily News was unable to find contact information for some of the entities involved and a call to a number listed in the notice of sale was not returned by printing deadline this morning.

Mall manager Chandra Moomey did not respond to repeated request for comments about the sale or the mall by printing deadline this morning.

This is not the first time the Holiday Village has changed hands, Yummy Foods manager Debi Friede said. It was no big deal when the mall was last sold, she said, and it didn't make big news headlines. Friede said she was working for another company at the time the mall was sold and the deal was a seamless process. She added that business at Yummy Foods is normal, the same as it has been in the past 10 years she has been open and everything is OK.

Northstar Athletics owner Rick Sedahl said, nothing is changing other than the owner of the mall. He said he does not have a lot of information regarding the auction, but business is the same since he first opened 13 years ago. It's still the mall, he said, adding that business is good.

Another Holiday Village tenant, who did not want her name to be published, said it is business as usual at the mall and the stores are not closing. The tenant said people might be worried because large chain stores, like Herberger's and Sears, closed but those were corporate stores and their closure had no reflection on the local economy or local businesses. Locally owned business, such as the ones in the mall and around town, are what drives local economies, the tenant said, and they are still here.

The mall has changed owners before and the businesses stayed, the tenant added, it is not all "doom and gloom" only a change. The tenant added many of the other tenants are looking at the positive side of the sale with the future full of exciting possibilities for the mall.

The tenant said after a local website published an article about the sale there has been a "bad taste in everybody's mouths." The tenant added that they were worried the article may have hurt some businesses by giving people the impression that the stores in the mall are in trouble when they are not.

The tenant said since the online article was published they have been berated with people asking when their stores are going to close. It gets old, the tenant said, adding that the businesses are not closing nor do they plan to.

North 40 spokesperson Drew Steinberger said the rumors going around about Havre's North 40 leaving Holiday Village are incorrect. The Havre North 40 has no plans to change location, he said, adding that the rumors are related to North 40 opening up a second location in Great Falls. The new location in Great Falls will be at the Northwest Bypass in place of the former Big Bear Sports Center and the Kmart, he said.

Steinberger added that there has been similar confusion in other areas of the state with rumors of local North 40's moving locations, but these rumors are not true.