One of Orange County’s higher-profile shopping centers is looking to become a little less square.
The owners of the Triangle Square mall in Costa Mesa are moving ahead on an estimated $25 million makeover of the nearly 200,000-square-foot center, a star-crossed fixture of the city’s retail landscape for two decades.
The investments include interior renovations for a batch of recently signed tenants at the three-story center, along with new exterior architecture, lighting, landscaping, and walkways, according to officials with Newport Beach-based real estate investor Greenlaw Partners, which owns the mall along with Westbrook Partners LLC in New York and Walton Street Capital LLC of Chicago.
The site’s seven-level parking structure, a frequent source of complaints from shoppers, also is due for a big makeover, according to Greenlaw.
Lighted indicators of the number of available spaces on each floor—similar to what’s seen at the Irvine Spectrum—as well as dedicated lanes for exiting the property and a valet parking area are expected, among other improvements.
Schedule
Plans for the bulk of the center’s upgrades, which could take three months or so to complete, are scheduled to be taken up by Costa Mesa’s planning commission this week.
The renovation plan comes with a new name for the center, which is at the end of the Costa Mesa (55) Freeway: The Triangle.
The center’s new moniker—its full name will become Triangle-Restaurants and Entertainment—reflects a decision to move away from the traditional retail shops that initially made up the bulk of the center’s tenants and toward turning the mall into a destination location, said Donald Lamm, a consultant with Newport Beach’s Diamond Star Associates Inc. who is working with Greenlaw.
“It’s a whole different direction,” said Lamm, the former deputy city manager for Costa Mesa. “It should have happened ten years ago.”
The strategy is similar to what’s being seen at Mission Viejo’s 241,000-square-foot Kaleidoscope mall, which has added a new base of entertainment and theme-related tenants to its mix since selling for $22 million in a lender-driven transaction in 2010.
Tenant Mixes
Newer malls also are looking to rework their tenant mixes to include new types of entertainment options.
Anaheim GardenWalk, a recently built 466,417-square-foot shopping center next to Disneyland that’s currently up for sale, has plans to reduce its retail space by 140,000 square feet while upping the amount for restaurants and entertainment.
Triangle Square has leased close to 135,000 square feet to new tenants since the start of 2010, according to Greenlaw executives. New arrivals include 24 Hour Fitness, which opened up a high-end, 54,000-square-foot gym there late last year.
Recently signed restaurants expected to join the Sutra nightclub, Yard House and others at the center later this year include a Saddle Ranch Chop House, Olive Branch Pizza and El Corazon de Costa Mesa.
Saddle Ranch has two other locations in California. Its flagship restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles has served as the basis of a reality TV show on VH1.
Another recent addition for Triangle Square is Bowlmor Lanes, an upscale bowling alley that will be leasing about 14,000 square feet.
Distance
The pending name change also is a move to distance the center from its past iterations.
Triangle Square opened in 1992 at a cost of $72 million, and has seen its share of tenants, owners, property managers and redevelopment plans come and go over the years.
Notable anchor tenants that have left the center include NikeTown, Whole Foods Market, Barnes & Noble and Virgin Megastore.
The recently opened 24 Hour Fitness gym replaces an empty spot used once used by grocer Whole Foods. The bowling alley will take up Virgin Megastore’s long-empty space once it moves in later this year.
The mall bottomed out at an occupancy rate of below 40% a few years ago but has since gotten back to more than 80% leased, according to brokerage data.
The last major space to fill is NikeTown’s old location, at the corner of Newport Boulevard and 19th Street.
Greenlaw first affiliated itself with the mall in 2006, when it worked with Wilton, Conn.-based Commonfund Realty Inc. to buy Triangle Square.
In 2007 the new owners proposed eliminating some retail space to make room for a condominium tower. Those plans were scrapped as the residential market imploded.
New Partners
Greenlaw brought in Westbrook Partners and Walton Street as new capital partners for the center in late 2010.
The same ownership group has made a name for itself the past few years buying largely empty office properties at a steep discount and leasing them up.
Their most profitable deal to date has been Irvine’s 2050 Main Street office tower, which they bought for about $56 million in 2009.
2050 Main Street sold late last year to an affiliate of Boston-based institutional investor AEW Global, which paid about $108.5 million for the office.
The rebranded and remodeled Triangle center—which had an assessed value of about $25 million in 2010, down from $50 million a decade ago—could go back on the market once leasing and the center’s upgrades are completed.
