Mills Buys 9M-SF Mall Portfolio for $1B

ARLINGTON, VA-Locally based developer the Mills Corp. spent $1 billion to become an equal partner in ownership of nine major retail properties with General Motors Asset Management Corp. Mills acquired half of the Managing Member LLC interest by plunking down $486 million in cash, and assuming $170 million of existing property debt and $377 million in new mortgages on four of the nine malls involved in the acquisition. Altogether, the deal covers 9.6 million sf of leasable retail space. Taubman Centers Inc., which developed most of the properties in the portfolio and owned them all until six years ago, has been serving as property manager for all the centers.

Among the nine properties of which retail and entertainment REIT is now co-owner is the 1.3-million-sf Stoneridge Mall in Pleasanton, CA, a submarket of San Francisco’s East Bay. Home to big name anchors Nordstrom, Macy’s, JCPenney and Sears, the 24-year-old property is approved for an additional 380,000 sf of development. Mills also bought into Columbus, OH’s Columbus City Center, a 1.2-million-sf shopping center developed 15 years ago in the middle of downtown. The center’s anchors are Lazarus and Kaufmann’s which, together, account for nearly 550,000 sf. Gaithersburg, MD’s Lakeforest Mall and Columbus, OH’s the Mall at Tuttle Crossing–both 1.1 million sf in size–were built in 1978 and 1997, respectively.

Also reaching the 1.1-million-sf mark are Marley Station in Anne Arundel County, MD and Hilltop Mall in W. Contra Costa County, CA. Built in 1987, Marley Station sits just 20 minutes outside of Baltimore near the Baltimore-Washington International Airport, while the 28-year-old Hilltop Mall sits in the town of Richmond. Rounding up the acquisition list are the 983,000-sf Briarwood Mall in Ann Arbor, MI, the 900,000-sf Meadowood Mall in Reno, NV, and Miami’s 821,000-sf the Falls. The malls were developed in 1973, 1978 and 1980, respectively.