LAYTON — One of the biggest shopping centers in the North Davis-Weber County area is officially under new ownership.

Layton Hills Mall, a nearly 600,000-square-foot retail center and commercial hub doing business in the heart of Layton since 1980, has been acquired by the Florida-based firm Second Horizon Capital.

The mall’s sale was announced Aug. 7. According to a release from CBL Properties, the previous ownership group, the mall was acquired in a $37.125 million all-cash sale.

Layton Hills Mall is the fifth mall to become part of Second Horizon Capital’s portfolio since the company’s 2021 inception. Its other investment properties are located in Richmond, Virginia; Little Rock, Arkansas; Kingston, Massachusetts; and Chicago Ridge, Illinois.

Camilo Varela, managing partner and co-founder of Second Horizon Capital, told the Standard-Examiner that he and his group have designs on improving Layton Hills Mall for the people who frequent it.

“It’s important to highlight that you don’t really own a mall. You’re more like the steward of the mall. The malls are owned not by the owner or the tenants, but by the community itself,” Varela said.

“These have become community amenities over time. The question is, how can you support that infrastructure, that amenity infrastructure, in the form of not just retail, but retail, entertainment, food and beverage, et cetera? And how the transformation of the mall, again, as a community center hub, can be supported and can be amplified.”

Finding the answer to that and other questions about how and when the mall will evolve to better serve its community will be an ongoing process, according to Howard Levine, another managing partner and co-founder of Second Horizon Capital.

Opinions vary on the viability of indoor shopping malls in the year 2024. For his part, though, Levine maintains that each mall is its own animal with unique attributes and challenges that may or may not apply to other malls.

“There’s plenty of ink that likes to say malls are back or ink that likes to say malls are going some direction. But it tends to miss the point, which is malls aren’t a generic property,” Levine told the Standard-Examiner. “They may get all treated together in the same way, but each individual center is different, and each one requires its own strategy to be successful.”

To that end, the leadership at Second Horizon Capital believes Layton Hills Mall already has a lot working in its favor.

“With Layton Hills right now, the current center is highly occupied with strong traffic,” Levine said. “There’s a lot of potential to expand the role that the mall is playing as a central hub within the Layton community, within Davis County more broadly.”

Given the early stage of its stewardship of the mall, Second Horizon Capital isn’t yet ready to announce specific renovations or upgrades that will occur at Layton Hills Mall.

Rest assured, though, they are coming.

“The mall has great bones,” Varela said. “Making it look like a modern retail facility, that is a process that just doesn’t happen overnight…. We have a pretty good sense that we need to start testing solutions and testing designs to see what’s going to work well here. And then start implementing them over time.”