RCA in the commercial property press:

Taubman Will Relinquish Atlantic City Shops to Lender

Bloomberg reports: Mall owner Taubman Centers Inc. plans to turn over to its lender a mall on the Atlantic City, New Jersey, boardwalk because the recession cut traffic to the East Coast gaming capital.

Taubman said the shops at the Caesars Atlantic City hotel aren’t generating enough cash to pay the debt. The Bloomfield Hills, Michigan-based real estate investment trust wrote down the value of The Pier Shops at Caesars and its Regency Square property in Richmond, Virginia, it said in a statement today.

“Taubman has made the decision not to fund the negative cash flow, and we’re going to start talking to the lenders about restructuring the debt,” Lisa Payne, Taubman Centers’ chief financial officer, said in a telephone interview. The lender may end up owning the asset, she said.

Atlantic City’s gambling revenue fell 16 percent in August as the second-biggest U.S. gambling center grappled with the industry’s worst slump on record. Sales at U.S. retail properties fell 71 percent to $3.6 billion in the first half of the year, according to New York-based research company Real Capital Analytics Inc.