Waterford ― The former Sears property at Crystal Mall will be auctioned for a second time next month.

Bidding on the 10.6-acre site, which includes a 155,906-square-foot retail building and an expansive parking lot, will start at $500,000, according to a listing with Crexi, the commercial real estate exchange. The town has set the property’s appraised value at $4,365,010.

Online bidding will start at noon Sept. 11 and continue through Sept. 13.

The property, owned by Seritage, a Sears spinoff, was initially auctioned May 17, when most of the rest of the mall sold in a separate auction for more than $9.5 million. It was reported at the time that the Sears property sold for about $4 million, but the bidder, who apparently failed to close on the deal, was never publicly identified.

Neither Avison Young, a real estate services firm involved in the auction, nor Namdar Realty Group, the mall buyer, immediately responded to requests for comment.

First Selectman Rob Brule said Thursday he considered the sale of the former Sears property to be “pivotal” to the repurposing of Crystal Mall though it’s not clear, he said, what Namdar has in mind for the Route 85 property beyond continuing to operate it as a mall.

“I”ve said all along that I’d prefer it be one owner,” Brule said.

A former Macy’s space at the mall is owned by CRJ Waterford, an entity controlled by Charles Robert Jones, a Tennessee developer, who bought it for $4 million in 2021.

The Crexi listing for the upcoming auction of the former Sears at Crystal Mall includes Avison Young’s marketing description of the property. It says the existing structure “could be easily re-tenanted for another retail use, or the entire site could be fully reimagined to include a mix of apartments, senior living, hotel, entertainment, structured parking or other options proposed by developers.”

The town has identified the mall as “a redevelopment opportunity,” the description says.

Namdar, which owns more than 60 malls across the country, including Crystal Mall and three others in Connecticut, has given no indication that it plans to repurpose Crystal Mall by introducing a mix of commercial and residential uses.

Brule said he spoke to Namdar’s chief operating officer, Dan Dilmanian, last week after reaching out to company executives. He said Namdar kept its intentions “tight to the vest.”

“I just wanted to introduce myself,” Brule said. “I got a chance to say we’re not like other dying malls. We’re actually located in a town that’s a great location for tourism.”

“Right now, there’s no other market in the state hotter than southeastern Connecticut,” he said. “We’ve got a low tax rate, we’re right off the highway and we’ve got two billion-dollar companies: General Dynamics (Electric Boat) and Millstone. I told them all that and that I’d love to sit down with them.”

“I’m not naïve, I’m optimistic,” Brule said.

Crystal Mall, more than a third empty, will be down to one anchor, JCPenney, when the mall’s Christmas Tree Shops location closes Aug. 12. The store will continue a liquidation sale until then.

Garden Bros Nuclear Circus, based in Sarasota, Fla., is scheduled to set up in a mall parking lot Aug. 17-20, offering family entertainment beneath a circus tent in a climate-controlled environment.

b.hallenbeck@theday.com