Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield Sells San Diego Mall for $290M

Westfield Mission Valley “East”. Image courtesy of Lowe

As part of its multi-year deleveraging strategy, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield has completed the sale of two parcels comprising the 1.5 million-square-foot Westfield Mission Valley shopping center in San Diego. The deals amounted to a total of $290 million.

Lowe—formerly Lowe Enterprises—and Real Capital Solutions purchased the approximately 1.1 million-square-foot Westfield Mission Valley “East” open-air center, while Sunbelt Investment Holdings Inc. picked up the Westfield Mission Valley “West” power center.

The asset opened in the early 1960s and last underwent a significant renovation in the 1990s. At the time of the sale, the Class B property had an overall occupancy of 71 percent.

Lowe and RCS revealed that they plan to reposition the 41-acre open-air center as a transit-oriented mixed-use village by refreshing the retail facilities and adding multifamily. The repositioning will fall under Lowe’s Retail reVision platform, launched in 2020.

Located at 1640 Camino del Rio N., opposite the San Diego Trolley’s Mission Valley Center Station, the property has easy access to interstates 8 and 805, as well as Highway 163.

The center’s current tenant mix includes Target, Nordstrom Rack, Macy’s Home, Michael’s, Bloomingdale’s Outlet, 24-Hour Fitness, AMC Mission Valley 20 theaters. Yard House, Outback and Buffalo Wild Wings are some of the dining options at the location.

Sunbelt Investment Holdings currently owns and operates 20 neighborhood and power shopping centers totaling more than 3.5 million square feet of leasable space in Southern California and Arizona. The company also has land holdings in Arizona totaling more than 2,200 acres.

San Diego’s healthy retail market

In February, URW sold its 1.2 million-square-foot North County Mall, in the San Diego suburb of Escondido, to Bridge Group Investments and Steerpoint Capital. The center is anchored by Macy’s, JCPenney and Target.

Metro San Diego’s retail market is seeing rental rates and construction deliveries trending up year-over-year, while vacancy rates decline, according to a second-quarter report from Kidder Mathews. In June, about 516,000 square feet of retail space was under construction in the metro, up 8.7 percent since the same period last year. The market’s overall vacancy hit 4.1 percent at the end of the second quarter, marking a nearly 2.4 percent decrease year-over-year.