Rock Falls car dealer buys a portion of Sterling mall parking lot

STERLING – The section of parking lot at Northland Mall that was not part of the recent reasphalting project now belongs to Ryan McCowan, owner of Bollman Auto Center in Rock Falls.

McCowan bought the lot a couple of weeks ago from Brookwood Capital, former owners of the mall at 2900 E. Lincolnway, for $200,000, but he’s still is working out what to do with the space, he said.

“I kinda bought it just to buy it,” McCowan said Tuesday.

He did hold his last cruise-in and car sale of the year there on Friday.

At the same time, the Tennessee-based commercial real estate developer sold the mall for a little more than $10 million to Sterling Investments LLC, which is based in Kentucky. That’s about $8.3 million more than it paid for it eight months ago.

Brookwood filled the near-empty mall by offering six months free rent to new tenants. It repaved most of the parking lot and upgraded the HVAC before putting the nearly 49-year-old building up for auction in June.

McCowan, a Prophetstown native now living in Rock Falls, bought Bollman, which sells preowned vehicles at the lot at 305 W. Rock Falls Road/U.S. Route 30, in February 2016.

Before that, he owned RK Auto Sales in Prophetstown from May 2014 until shortly after he bought the dealership.

Bollman Motors was founded by Phil Bollman of Rock Falls, who was a Sauk Valley car dealer for 62 years before his death on Oct. 23, 2014.

Go to bollmanauto.com or find it on Facebook for information.