Gateway Center, a nine-building retail center along Alicia Parkway in Mission Viejo, has traded hands.
An affiliate of San Diego-based Gerrity Group LLC, a privately held retail property investor, paid a reported $28.6 million for the nearly 79,000-square-foot property, according to real estate sources.
Gateway Center is about a mile from the San Diego (I-5) Freeway at Alicia Parkway and Jeronimo Road. It was built in 1978 and sits on 8.6 acres.
Tenants
Tenants at the neighborhood center include a collection of smaller shops and restaurants and retailers, with most stores running less than 2,000 square feet.
Larger tenants include the Meat House butcher shop and a JP Morgan Chase bank branch.
The property is said to be about 80% leased and brings in about $2.5 million in rents annually, according to brokerage data.
The reported sale price works out to about $363 per square foot. It’s one of the higher retail sales per square foot seen in South Orange County this year.
The sale also is believed to be South OC’s most expensive retail sale of the past quarter besides San Francisco-based Merlone Geier Partners’ purchase of the 68-acre Laguna Hills Mall last month on undisclosed terms, according to brokerage data.
An affiliate of Westwood Financial Corp. of Los Angeles was the seller, according to property records.
Westwood, which owns two other centers in Mission Viejo and four properties in all of OC, paid a reported $15 million for the center in 2001.
The property was listed for sale last year with an asking price of $33 million, according to marketing materials from the Newport Beach office of CBRE Group Inc. The center had a $19.5 million loan tied to it as of early last year.
It’s the second acquisition reported in OC for affiliates of Gerrity Group.
Two years ago, the company’s Gerrity Atlantic Retail Partners LLC paid about $14.5 million for Brea Center, a 56,945-square-foot property in Brea that’s anchored by a Vons grocery store.
Westwood Financial also was the seller of the Brea Center property.
Retail center investment veteran William Gerrity, founder and former chief executive of what is now called Terramar Retail Centers in Carlsbad, started Gerrity Group a few years ago.
13 Calif. Properties
The company’s website now shows Gerrity Group owning 13 properties in California, Washington and Oregon.
Other Southern California deals the company is reported to have made over the past two years have run in the $20 million to $30 million range, including properties in Oceanside and Escondido.
The company said it’s looking to invest in mature submarkets throughout the western United States as a principal and in partnership with financial institutions.
CBRE’s Preston Fetrow, Gleb Lvovich, Phil Voorhees, Todd Goodman and Kirk Brummer listed the Mission Viejo center for sale. Brokers representing the seller weren’t disclosed.
