MBK Sells 157,500-SF Grocery-Anchored Center

LAKEWOOD, WA-MBK Northwest of Lake Oswego, OR, has sold the 157,000-sf neighborhood center component of the 1 million-sf Lakewood Towne Center here for $31.5 million. The new owner is Lakha Investments of Bellevue, WA, which earlier this month acquired the 121,514-sf Warm Springs Plaza grocery-anchored retail center in Fremont, CA, for about $41 million. The neighborhood center in Lakewood is anchored by a 62,800-sf Safeway grocery store–the largest in Pierce County and one of the most successful stores in the region–as well as a brand new Safeway gas station. Other tenants include Saar’s Marketplace, Applebee’s, Panda Express, Cold Stone Creamery, Payless ShoeSource, Hill’s Hallmark, Subway, Supercuts and HairMasters. Lakewood Towne Center sits on a 100-acre retail property that MBK acquired in 2001 for $28 million. It then spent upwards of $50 million transforming it from a 1.2 million-sf enclosed mall and strip center into a slightly smaller open-air development that includes a 590,000-sf power center, the aforementioned grocery-anchored neighborhood center, an entertainment component and Lakewood City Hall. Last August, Chicago-based Inland Real Estate Acquisitions Inc., a division of The Inland Real Estate Group of Companies, paid $81 million for the power center component. Some of the retailers include Barnes & Noble, Michaels, Bed Bath & Beyond, Ross, Gottschalks, Old Navy, G.I. Joe’s, Burlington Coat Factory, Famous Footwear, Office Depot, Pier 1, 24 Hour Fitness, PETsMART, Old Country Buffet and the Lakewood Towne Center Cinemas.The neighborhood center was the final component of the redevelopment. MBK Northwest president Mason Frank could not be reached Monday for comment. “It’s been a very, very successful redevelopment for us,” he told GlobeSt.com after the power center sold last year. MBK Northwest is a division of MBK Real Estate Ltd., the Irvine, CA-based real estate arm of Mitsui & Co. Ltd. The Lakewood project was MBK’s biggest in terms of land area and square footage. MBK acquired the Parkway Plaza and Pavilion Mall near Southcenter in 1997 and redeveloped it into Parkway SuperCenter, which it sold off in chunks between 2001 and 2003 for a total of about $130 million. It also renovated SeaTac Village in Federal Way and, in Portland, OR, turned the Jantzen Beach Mall into Jantzen Beach SuperCenter.