CHICAGO – General Growth Properties Inc., the giant real estate investment trust that owns Providence Place and more than 200 other malls around the country, early this morning filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

GGP will continue to operate its properties during the reorganization, the company said.

“Our core business remains sound and is performing well with stable cash flows,” CEO Adam Metz said in a statement. “We believe that Chapter 11 is the best process for restructuring maturing mortgage loans, reducing the company’s corporate debt and establishing a sustainable, long-term capital structure for the company.”

For months, the mall owner had been working to refinance or extend its maturing debut – repeatedly saying that it might have to file for bankruptcy. In the voluntary petition filed this morning in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, the company listed more than $25 billion in unpaid debt.

Metz said, “While we have worked tirelessly in the past several months to address our maturing debts, the collapse of the credit markets has made it impossible for us to refinance.”

“It was a disaster waiting to happen,” London’s Henderson Global Investors Head of Real Estate Securities Patrick Sumner told Bloomberg News this morning. “They didn’t realize the market was going to get like this and that they were going to be in the front line when the guns went off.”

In an effort to bring in some much-needed cash, the company this year put on the market Providence Place and a “Festival Portfolio” that included Faneuil Hall Market Place in Boston. Although the company reported interest in the Faneuil Hall package, the properties have not yet been sold.

Much of the debt GGP has been unable to repay stems from a 2004 deal in which GGP purchased The Rouse Co., which had owned Providence Place and 36 other malls. GGP reported taking out $8 billion to finance that transaction.

“It’s no secret that [then-CEO] John Bucksbaum, the hard-charging son of the co-founder of General Growth Properties, picked a poor time to go on a highly leveraged shopping spree,” Larew, Doyle & Associates Principal Alan Doyle told Providence Business News late last year.

GGP also announced this morning that Pershing Square International Ltd. – the hedge fund managed by William A. Ackman that had bought a 20 percent stake in the company in November – will give debtor-in-possession financing of about $375 million to fund the company while it reorganizes.

General Growth Properties Inc. (NYSE: GGP) – owner of Providence Place and the Silver City Galleria in Taunton and manager of the Swansea Mall – has a portfolio that includes about 200 million square feet of retail space and more than 24,000 stores, as well as stakes in various master-planned community developments and commercial office buildings. Additional information is available at www.ggp.com.