Retailers at Golden Triangle Mall have already started busying themselves with fall and holiday shopping season preparations.

After all, they don’t have time to worry about the mall’s new ownership; they need to make the next sale.

Arizona-based En Pertignus Holding Corp. purchased Golden Triangle at a July 6 foreclosure auction for $19.4 million, officials said.

The corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of JPMorgan Chase & Co., the bank holding a $24.6 million lien against the Denton mall, officials said.

Along with the $24.6 million mortgage, JPMorgan Chase will forgive New York-based Feldman Mall Properties Inc. of a $1.3 million guarantee on the loan, according to information released by Feldman, Golden Triangle’s former owner.

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Shoppers visit with each other and browse through the retail offerings at Golden Triangle Mall recently in Denton.

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In corporate documents filed in Arizona, En Pertignus said the company was formed to take the title of a foreclosed property and sell it.

The bank opted to foreclose on the 765,000-square-foot mall following a year of turmoil and hopes that Feldman would scrape together new capital and improve the mall’s income, said Greg Hassell, vice president of communication for JPMorgan Chase.

Hassell has said that the bank was unable to avoid foreclosing on the property.

Golden Triangle was the first mall in the region in two years to be foreclosed upon and is reflective of the lasting effects of the global economic downturn, said Bonnie Brown, a spokeswoman for Addison-based Foreclosure Listing Service Inc.

“These are tough times for malls, or any type of retail,” she said. “The cycle started with the residential housing market, … and while we’ve seen some smidgen of easing, it’s natural that the commercial side of the industry would experience higher foreclosure postings.”

Foreclosures on mall properties are a rarity, as banks often try to make every effort possible to keep large properties out of a foreclosure sale, she said.

The mall was the highest-dollar posting in Denton County since November 2008, Brown said.

Earlier this year, the mall property was given an assessed value of $14.3 million — a value that has plummeted by more than $10 million in the last five years, according to data released by the Denton Central Appraisal District.

The last time Golden Triangle was valued at $14 million was in 1994, according to the data.

Feldman purchased the property in 2006 for an estimated $40 million.

Compared with the original loan of $24.6 million, it appeared that the investors were “upside-down” in the property, Brown said.

Feldman purchased Golden Triangle and a few other older malls in hopes of renovating the properties and making them profitable.

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University of North Texas senior Joey Quezada looks over a wall of baseball caps at Hat World in Golden Triangle Mall recently.

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But times have changed since 1980, when Golden Triangle was built; consumers’ tastes have changed to open-air shopping centers, officials said.

The competition for tenants for enclosed malls is simply too tough for some malls to handle, said Harold Hunt, a research economist with the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University.

The market for enclosed malls is bifurcated — with some malls that have been maintained and built in good locations doing well, and the others, which haven’t been updated or suffer from poor locations, left suffering, Hunt said.

“Consumers have changed their preferences and moved on,” he said. “People want the outdoor look. They want to drive up close to the store and park.”

While Golden Triangle manager Matt Ludemann said he is hopeful that the bank’s holding corporation will put needed money into the mall for updates, Hunt said the odds of En Pertignus spending more money on the property are slim.

“I would assume that the bank would not want to spend any money on it,” Hunt said. “They probably wouldn’t want to put any more money in it and are looking for a buyer.”

Ludemann said the mall, which has an estimated annual economic impact on Denton of about $80 million to $100 million, is mostly filled with paying tenants.

As retailers struggle to recover following the recession, keeping the mall about 90 percent occupied is cause for celebration, he said.

What’s the biggest challenge in operating a mall recently sold at a foreclosure auction? Ludemann said it’s educating the public that a foreclosure sale doesn’t mean the mall will close anytime soon.

“People hear the word ‘foreclosure’ and they assume the mall’s closing,” he said. “That’s not the case. It’s not frequent a mall closes and is torn down. Our biggest challenge is letting the public know … the plan is moving forward.”

CANDACE CARLISLE can be reached at 940-566-6889. Her email address is ccarlisle@dentonrc.com.