$97M Buys 637,000-SF Westgate Mall

SAN JOSE-Federal Realty Investment Trust has paid $97 million in cash for Westgate Mall, a 637,000-sf shopping center here that is 98% leased. It is the first West Coast acquisition for the Rockville, MD-based REIT in about five years, and it appears the company is ready to make up for lost time.

“We’re actively looking for assets; hopefully this is just the beginning of a lot of great things we are going to be able to invest in out here,” Federal Realty’s Western Region COO Jan Sweetnam tells GlobeSt.com. “We’d love to mirror our East Coast region.”

With the acquisition, Federal Realty now controls four retail properties comprising about 1.3 million sf of lettable area in the South Bay and about two million sf statewide. The vast majority of the company’s 16.2-million-sf portfolio is concentrated in the major markets between Boston and Washington, DC.