SITE Centers Sells Buena Park Mall for $53M

SITE Centers closed its $53 million sale of Buena Park Place, a roughly 209,000-square-foot grocery-anchored retail center, adjacent to the Knott’s Berry Farm theme park in Buena Park, JLL Capital Markets announced earlier this week.

The buyer, an LLC linked to a company called America West Properties and Japanese restaurant wholesaler Ming Hong International, bought the center for about $254 per square foot. Property records do not disclose what SITE paid for the mall in 2004.

A JLL team led by Bryan Ley represented the seller. Site owns 119 malls across the country, according to an annual report, including The Pike Outlets in Long Beach, Falcon Ridge Town Center in Fontana, plus six retail centers in Northern California, including the Whole Foods at Bay Place in Oakland.

The total annualized base rent at the mall was $3.65 million in 2022, according to an SEC filing.

The JLL team was led by Bryan Ley. The deal comes at a time when the business of big-box retail centers has been questioned.

CoStar research found that retailers signed leases averaging 3,200 square feet during the first three quarters of 2023, the smallest since CoStar started tracking big-box retail in 2006, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month.

However, there has been little activity in mall sales. In July, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield traded its San Diego area retail centers Westfield Mission Valley East Mall and Westfield Mission Valley West Center for $290 million, according to media reports.

Buena Park Place is anchored by an Aldi grocery store. Other tenants include Kohl’s, PetSmart, Planet Fitness, Chick-Fil-A, Ono Hawaiian BBQ and Dollar Tree. About 3.9 million people visit Buena Park Place annually, according to a JLL statement.