BOARDMAN — A 21 News Watchdog Report earlier this month found Kohan Retail Investment Group, owner of the Southern Park Mall, owed at least $8.7 million in property taxes at its malls across the country — but that isn’t the extent of its issues. 

The company has faced litigation from city officials at a mall in Marshalltown, Iowa over fire code violations related to unpaid power bills. A small business owner and former employee of another mall in Temple, Texas say Kohan has refused to pay for repairs and utilities. Another mall tenant, this time in Cobb County, Georgia, is suing Kohan for misusing funds it gave the company for electricity that went unpaid. 

Looking at the issues other malls have faced, and the ways they have weathered the storm, can offer a glimpse at the Southern Park Mall’s future. The Boardman Township property isn’t guaranteed to follow in any of these malls’ footsteps, but the pattern is clear: Kohan’s avoidance of paying into its properties extends beyond taxes and into utilities and maintenance. 

21 News reached out to Mike Kohan Thursday with a request for comment on the claims made in this article, and has not received a response. 

The Town Center at Cobb — Kennesaw, GA

At one Kohan-owned mall, issues with unpaid utilities have led to a civil Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) lawsuit. 

Starrcade, a tenant of the Town Center at Cobb in Georgia, brought the lawsuit after the mall lost power and closed suddenly in January. Georgia Power told NBC affiliate 11Alive the mall was “highly delinquent” in paying its electric bill, and the power company could “no longer continue to extend the grace period.”

But according to the lawsuit, tenants such as Starrcade pay a monthly $350 utility fee to Kohan in addition to their base rent — money that attorney Mitch Skandalakis says should have gone toward the electric bill. 

“Not only is this a breach of contract, but it's a crime,” Skandalakis, who represents Starrcade in the lawsuit, said. “Every payment that Kohan takes for utilities that is not applied to the utilities is an infraction under civil RICO, and you need … two, three predicate acts in order for that to apply.”

Unlike the federal RICO act, Georgia’s law allows individuals to pursue civil RICO lawsuits in cases involving alleged activity like theft, fraud, embezzlement and personal injury — even if the defendants were acting alone or for a short time. If successful, victims can recover three times the amount of damages. 

The lawsuit could also lead to the publicizing of Kohan’s business records, Skandalakis said, through the discovery process. 

“We hope to figure out where this money went from these tenants, in particular my tenant. What did they do with those funds?” Skandalakis said. “Because at this juncture, my belief is we are entitled to their business records. We are entitled to their business checking accounts.”

“And if that money is going to other malls or to Kohan directly, one of my goals is to go after him individually and seize his personal assets,” he added. 

However, that stage of the lawsuit may not come to pass. Skandalakis said he’s currently in talks with Kohan’s legal team about settling the suit, which has put discovery on hold. 

While he said he would like to see Kohan “waste all of his time, energy and money” on the suit, he also pointed out Starrcade is a small business with limited resources, which makes settling a more attractive option. 

“If I was representing Macy's, this would be a totally different discussion, because they would say, ‘Go get him,’ you know, ‘Bring his head back on a pipe,’ and then we'll discuss going further,” Skandalakis said. 

The Marshalltown Mall — Marshalltown, IA

Kohan has also faced a lawsuit from the city of Marshalltown, Iowa, in another case that started with a power outage. 

Electricity to parts of the Marshalltown Mall was turned off in November 2023 after Kohan became in default on its utility bills, according to Fire Marshal Josh Warnell, who said the outage lasted for over a year. 

The outage created significant safety concerns, Warnell said, including violations of the fire code. 

“There's no power to power the fire alarm system, and secondly, being in Iowa in the Midwest, it was close to the winter time where we get to freezing temps,” Warnell said. “That type of sprinkler system is called a wet pipe system. So basically, as there's water sitting in all these pipes … the pipes are susceptible to freezing.”

Warnell explained that the tenants in Marshalltown Mall paid their own utilities directly, so most of the businesses maintained power. The stores with direct exits to the outside were able to stay open, but one business inside was shut down because customers would have to exit through the part of the mall without power in an emergency situation.

In January 2024, the city issued a municipal infraction to Kohan for failing to restore the electricity and resolve the fire code violations. This kicked off litigation that stretched over the course of a year, with a judge at one point ruling in Marshalltown’s favor before Kohan appealed the ruling. 

Eventually, Kohan reached out to the city to ask them to drop the lawsuit to allow for a sale. Marshalltown agreed — according to Warnell, the city could see the mall’s prospective new owner, Reserve Development, had “actual plans” for the mall. 

The sale was completed in January 2025, and nine months later, those plans are coming to fruition. 

“They have crews in there, and they have demolished already. They are ready to get going,” Warnell said. “There's building permits getting issued up there. The roof has been resealed. New contracts are going in with the existing people.”

Warnell told 21 News while it wasn’t his original intent, he believes the city’s lawsuit is what pushed Kohan to look for a buyer. He encouraged any government officials who face similar struggles in their area to look into their codes for answers. 

“There's a lot of power that you can use when you get these code sets involved, and it's just following through with them,” Warnell said. 

“My advice is making sure that your codes are well intact and gone over very well,” he added. “And if you do have questions, there's so many of us out here that do this every day, feel free to reach out.”

The Temple Mall — Temple, TX

The Temple Mall in Texas is hoping for a similar happy ending, as it nears a potential sale after almost four years of Kohan ownership. 

Rob Brandenburg is a longtime tenant of the mall who owns three businesses: Peggy’s Coffee House, Under My Skin and Candy & More. He told 21 News for the first few years of Kohan’s ownership, there weren’t many issues at the mall — but he said that changed in 2024, when the water was cut off to the mall due to non-payment multiple times. 

This caused major issues for his businesses, which require water to operate. Eventually, Brandenburg said he took matters into his own hands and paid for the water meter serving his part of the mall. This continued over several months. 

“My thing was, I'm not going to keep waiting for it to be disconnected to fight for it to get turned back on,” Brandenburg said. “I'm going to have to stay ahead of this so we can continue operating.”

Brandenburg said his managers at the mall gave him rent concessions in exchange for paying the bill, so the payments were not out-of-pocket expenses. 

Shannon DeSanto, a former general manager at the Temple Mall, corroborated Brandenburg’s account. She worked at the property from late 2024 until she was let go in August. She says while she can’t prove it, she believes her firing was related to her becoming “a thorn in their side with regard to getting the bills paid.” 

“I knew what was coming into that mall. I knew what monies were coming in because I was the one collecting it,” DeSanto told 21 News. “So for them not to take care of things, it just made no sense to me.” 

This summer, DeSanto said the internet went out at the Temple Mall without warning. She reached out to an accounts payable employee with Kohan, who encouraged her to pay the bill with her own money. 

“I made it appear as though I was making an effort to get it paid, and I reached out to him and I said, ‘I don't have the account number to do this,’” DeSanto said. “And [the employee] said, ‘You don't need the account number. Just sign in as a guest and pay it.’”

DeSanto said she refused, and just weeks later was let go. 

As general manager, she had paid money out-of-pocket towards the mall on other occasions, she said, including to change stores’ door locks after some break-ins. She took on much of the maintenance and landscaping on the property, using her own lawnmower and weed whacker because “they wouldn’t pay a landscaper.” 

Another source of frustration for DeSanto and the mall’s tenants was damage from a May 2024 tornado that destroyed hundreds of homes in the area. According to her, the tornado caused damage to the mall’s roof and skylights, which Kohan would not pay to fix — and the month before, the mall’s insurance lapsed due to nonpayment. 

DeSanto said after paying thousands per month on tarps to cover the damage, she eventually found a contractor to repair some of the skylights in the main part of the mall. 

“He saw the situation we were in, felt bad for us, and put some skylights in for us, and still hasn't gotten paid,” DeSanto said. “So he is threatening, as everyone else, to put a lien on the property, because that is the only way that things are getting paid.”

To this day, Brandenburg said the rest of the damage remains unrepaired. 

“There's one area specifically that becomes a lake in the mall, and our janitor and security just do their best to Shop-Vac and mop and set buckets out,” he said. “It’s embarrassing. It’s disheartening.”

There has been at least one recent improvement: Brandenburg said in the past few months, Kohan has begun paying the water bill again prior to disconnection. But he and DeSanto each said as far as they know, Kohan is still not paying for electricity on the property. Instead, three anchor stores split the bill, which they’ve been taking care of since the threat of disconnection first arose on Black Friday weekend 2024. 

Two of those stores have been looking into setting up their own electric meters, DeSanto said. If that happens, they could pay the utilities of their own stores directly, and it would be up to Kohan to keep the rest of the property from going dark. 

But major changes could be on the horizon even before that would take effect. The president of Houston-based development group RockStep Capital, Andy Weiner, confirmed to 21 News RockStep is under contract to purchase the Temple Mall from Kohan. 

“The plans are to de-mall the mall, face all tenants to outside entrances, close off the interior, and relocate existing tenants,” Weiner said in a statement. “We are working with the city in this endeavor, and the city supports our efforts to clean up the property.”

Brandenburg and DeSanto each said they are optimistic RockStep will be a better owner for the mall, though Brandenburg said the change could come with growing pains. 

“If we can get to the other side of that, I think [we] can find a new form of success,” Brandenburg said. “So it's kind of like, we have a road of pain and discomfort that can at least end in some success, or you have a road of pain and discomfort that's probably going to end in a dark, empty building.”

The Town Center at Cobb, Marshalltown Mall and the Temple Mall are just a snapshot of how Kohan has handled its properties across the country. The group owes millions in property taxes and faces additional lawsuits for non-payment of services, including utilities, property taxes and employee benefits. 

In March, a suit was filed in New York alleging Kohan failed to pay employee benefits to retirement and savings plans. Back at the Southern Park Mall, union workers with Teamsters Local 377 have an open National Labor Relations Board filing against Kohan for claims of refusal to bargain/bad faith bargaining and repudiation/modification of contract.

Despite the number of civil actions, it appears no criminal charges have ever been filed against Kohan — the company or its owner. Skandalakis said he found it “unbelievable” that no governments, including the U.S. Attorney’s office, have gone after Kohan. 

“Somebody needs to wake up and go after this guy criminally, because with a criminal indictment, we could get restitution from him,” Skandalakis said. “His hand would be forced by the government to disgorge assets to pay these tenants for the wrong that he has imposed upon them.”