Taubman Completes $560M Purchase of Three Centers
Retail REIT Taubman Centers Inc. has completed the $560 million purchase of three shopping centers from Davis Street Properties.
By Scott Baltic, Contributing Editor
Retail REIT Taubman Centers Inc. has completed its $560 million purchase of three shopping centers–one in Nashville and two in Palm Desert, Calif.–from Davis Street Properties of Evanston, Ill., Taubman announced late last week.
The three centers are The Mall at Green Hills in Nashville and The Gardens on El Paseo and El Paseo Village, which are across the street from each other in Palm Desert.
Though built in 1955, the 887,000-square-foot Mall at Green Hills has been expanded and renovated multiple times, according to Taubman. Its most recent expansion added a 149,000-square-foot Nordstrom that opened in September; the store is Nashville’s only Nordstrom. Other anchors are Dillard’s and Macy’s.
The two adjacent properties in Palm Desert operate as an open-air fashion-oriented specialty center. The Gardens on El Paseo was built in 1998, and El Paseo Village was completed in 2010. They total 236,000 square feet of GLA and are anchored by Saks Fifth Avenue.
The $560 million consideration consists of the assumption of $206 million of debt, $281 million in installment notes and the balance in 1.3 million partnership units (based on a value of $55 per unit) in Taubman Realty Group L.P. The 3.125 percent installment notes are fully cash collateralized, with funds drawn from Taubman’s lines of credit.
According to a November report from CoStar Group Inc., Nashville’s retail market improved slightly in the third quarter, with vacancy decreasing to 6.4 percent from 6.7 percent in the previous quarter. Net absorption was 455,000 square feet, and vacant sublease space decreased by 38,000 square feet. Quoted rents increased from the second quarter, to $13.68 per square foot.
The Palm Desert area is a somewhat different story, according to October figures from the Ontario, Calif., office of Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Services. They suggested that the retail vacancy rate in Riverside and San Bernardino counties would end 2011 at 11.7 percent, or up about 0.2 percent from a year earlier. The Coachella Valley, which includes Palm Desert, reportedly has a retail vacancy rate of 17.7 percent, the highest in the two-county area.
Taubman Centers, a REIT, specializes in regional and super-regional shopping centers and owns, manages and/or leases 27 properties in the United States.
