SCRANTON -- We now know who bought the Mall at Steamtown.
The new owner is a businessman from our area who also owns a roofing company and a popular restaurant.
The Mall at Steamtown will stay in local hands. Lackawanna County real estate developer John Basalyga closed on the sale of the mall late Monday afternoon.
He had the winning bid of $5.25 million when the Mall at Steamtown went up for auction last month.
Basalyga was not able to go public because the sale was not final. That happened on Monday.
The longer the identity of the winning bidder was kept secret, more and more people in downtown Scranton began to think someone from out of the area bought it.
John Basalyga owns a roofing business in Jessup and a restaurant in Spring Brook Township, but recently he has made a name for himself by renovating old industrial buildings throughout the county and making them into apartments.
We reached out to Basalyga and he said he is both "excited and optimistic" about the future of the mall.