An investor from San Diego has bought the Village at Orange shopping center in one of the largest reported retail deals in Orange County this year.
An affiliate of TRC recently closed on the purchase of the majority of the 685,000-square-foot center on North Tustin Street, just off the Orange (55) Freeway.
The shopping center was OC’s 16th largest by sales in the 12-month period ending June 30, with $160.8 million in sales, according to Business Journal data.
TRC paid Phoenix-based Vestar about $84.5 million for a bulk of the center, according to property records.
Anchor tenants include Wal-Mart, JCPenney, and a Ross Dress for Less.
A Sears store of about 250,000-square-feet remains under ownership of the Hoffman Estates, Ill.-based retailer and was not part of the transaction, nor were a few other small portions of the center.
A portion of the Sears space is subleased to 24 Hour Fitness.
Other tenants include a Habit Burger Grill, Buffalo Wild Wings, and a number of specialty fashion shops and independent retailers.
The center has 67 tenants, according to Business Journal data. Sales there were down 1.9% from a year ago to $160.8 million.
It changed for approximately $200 per square foot, not counting the square footage owned by Sears, according to brokerage data.
Brian Ley, managing director of the Los Angeles office of brokerage HFF LP, represented Vestar in the sale.
Vestar bought the Village at Orange in 2013 on undisclosed terms as part of a joint venture. It announced shortly after buying it that it planned more than $15 million in upgrades to the property, which was built in 1971.
Construction work on the upgrades is still under way and scheduled to be completed under the new ownership.
It’s the first large OC property that TRC is known to own. The retail investor and developer operated as Terramar Retail Centers LLC until this year. It keeps its headquarters in the San Diego County city of Carlsbad.
Company officials could not be reached for comment on the acquisition.
TRC marketing materials show the company operates about 20 centers in California, primarily in San Diego and Los Angeles County. It also has reported holdings in Colorado, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii, and has a portfolio encompassing about 5 million square feet.
Prominent centers its reported to own include the 434,000-square-foot Quad at Whittier, and Plaza at Golden Valley in Santa Clarita, which runs 618,000-square-feet.
It also operates Seaport Village, a nearly 90,000-square-foot collection of retailers along downtown San Diego’s waterfront.
Its lease for those properties—which is owned by the San Diego Unified Port District—expires in 2018, and the site will be redeveloped by another company, according to local reports.
The sale of the Village at Orange is the largest retail transaction in Orange County since August, when New York-based asset management firm TIAA Global Asset Management bought a 70% stake in the Pacific City shopping center in Huntington Beach.
TIAA paid $129.7 million for its stake in the 190,900-square-foot retail property, which opened last year.
The price puts a valuation of about $185 million on the 11-acre shopping center, or about $970 per square foot.
San Jose-based DJM Capital Partners, the developer of Pacific City, has retained the remaining 30% stake and will continue to manage the property.
Older retail properties that have sold in the past year include a majority stake in Buena Park Downtown, a 535,000-square-foot regional mall a block from Knott’s Berry Farm, traded hands in late December for about $85 million, or roughly $160 per square foot, according to property records.
The center was bought by a Los Angeles-based investor with ties to that city’s Korean-American community. Buena Park has a significant Korean-American population, and is sometimes referred to as Orange County’s Koreatown.
