South Mississippi’s largest shopping center has been sold. Here’s what we know
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- CBL Properties sold The Promenade in D’Iberville for $83.1 million in 2025.
- The shopping center remains nearly fully leased, with continued tenant demand.
- New ownership could bring national restaurant chains to The Promenade site.
The biggest shopping center in South Mississippi has a new owner.
CBL Properties announced Monday it has sold The Promenade in D’Iberville.
The news release didn’t disclose who bought the shopping center and there is no indication of a new website or Facebook page.
The purchase price was $83.1 million.
Headquartered in Chattanooga, Tennessee, CBL Properties opened The Promenade in 2009, bringing much-welcomed stores to South Mississippi four years after Hurricane Katrina closed many favorite shopping options.
Anchored by the first Target in South Mississippi, the 621,000-square-foot “entertainment center” is a mix of stores like Dick’s Sporting Goods, Kohl’s, Best Buy, PetSmart and Old Navy, and restaurants such as Buffalo Wild Wings and Olive Garden.
With the sale finalized, a new tenant might be secured for the former Red Lobster restaurant from among the national restaurant chains that have expressed interest through the city’s planning and development department.
The outparcels where Red Lobster and some of the other restaurants are located had to legally be replatted, said D’Iberville City Manager Bobby Weaver. It’s unknown if those parcels are part of the new ownership.
“The Promenade disposition was completed at an attractive 8.5% cap rate, providing a meaningful demonstration of the tremendous value of CBL’s open-air portfolio, which has gone unrecognized by the market,” Stephen Lebovitz, CBL’s CEO, said in a statement.
CBL owns and manages 87 properties across 20 states, including malls, outlet centers and open-air centers.
Transforming D’Iberville
The Promenade grew D’Iberville into a retail powerhouse after Hurricane Katrina and brought traffic, new roads, several new car dealerships and more development to the city that now has the third highest sales tax revenue in South Mississippi after Gulfport and Biloxi.
Groundbreaking for The Promenade came in July 2008 after CBL & Associates Properties and Forum Development Group from Atlanta acquired 72 acres northwest of the Interstate 10 and 110 intersection.
“We believe The Promenade will serve to revitalize the area and create a much needed retail hub and service district for the D’Iberville community,” said Stephen Lebovitz, president of CBL & Associates Properties.
The projections were for 1,000 jobs and more than $185 million in annual retail sales.
The tenants weren’t yet identified by the time ground was broken, but Geoffrey Smith, vice president of development for CBL & Associates Properties, and he said the community “will not be disappointed. The Promenade will be anchored by many of our nation’s most popular shopping and dining destinations.”
Traffic every weekend
The developers and city of D’Iberville began building a five-lane road to connect The Promenade to the shopping centers on Sangani Boulevard.
But traffic grew much faster than the roads could handle, and traffic was jammed every weekend and holiday.
D’Iberville extended more than $18 million in tax increment financing, or TIF bonds for The Promenade. They were repaid with tax revenue generated by the project, to help the developer pay for infrastructure and new roads, including The Promenade Parkway that winds through the shopping center.
The Mississippi Department of Transportation spent about $120 million to add new exit and entrance ramps from the interstates and Mayor Rusty Quave said MDOT wanted the city to chip in $30 million to improve the roads in D’Iberville.
Traffic eased when the new exits were built, a “fly-over” bridge completed in 2013 connected The Promenade with Sangani shopping centers, and a diverging diamond intersection completed in 2015 gave a second entrance to the shopping center.
The city had Walmart and the shops along Sangani that were the catalyst for retail growth after Katrina, and Weaver said The Promenade “put us at a great position of economic vitality.” The city gets a tax diversion from the state of more than $10.5 million every year for the last three or four years.
Highs and lows
The 2009 opening of The Promenade came as the country was in a recession, but it didn’t seem to curtail sales at the stores and restaurants.
By 2010, the first Black Friday for the new Kohl’s store at The Promenade, a 3 a.m. opening before most other stores paid off big, with long lines at the checkouts. People camped all night outside Best Buy at The Promenade, and the lines wrapped around the building at Target before the doors opened at 4 a.m.
In 2011, cracks began to appear in the floors of some stores at The Promenade and in large patches of parking-lot blacktop.
CBL declined comment, but then D’Iberville City Manager Michael Janus said the company has been very forthcoming with city officials about the problem they didn’t cause.
“There is a rumor that The Promenade is sinking and there’s no truth to that,” he said. “It’s quite the opposite. It’s heaving.”
The problems were found to be the result of a Louisiana company providing fill material that caused the soil to heave and slabs to crack. Lawsuits were filed to collect some of the damages.
Construction continued at the east side of The Promenade to add Ashley Home Furniture, Burlington and other stores.
“The Promenade seems to stay full of tenants, and if someone does move out, they’ve got somebody locked in,” Weaver said.
This story was originally published July 22, 2025 at 10:34 AM.
