URW Sells Westfield Valencia Town Center for $199M

Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield (URW) has sold the Westfield Valencia Town Center to Dallas-based Centennial for $199M, the companies have announced.

The European mall giant, based in Paris, said in February that it sopped repaying the $195M secured debt on the 60-acre mall, located at 24201 Valencia Boulevard in Santa Clarita, when it matured in January. The mall’s asset value was $100M as of December 2022.

Centennial said in a statement that it is planning to reposition the Valencia Town Center as a live-work-play destination.

“Valencia Town Center is in the perfect location to become a multi-use live-work-play destination that seamlessly and aesthetically combines retail, restaurants, entertainment, luxury living and office space in a single master-planned campus,” said Carl Tash, Centennial’s chief investment officer, in the statement.

Last month, URW secured a $925M loan for the 1.4M SF Westfield Century City shopping center in Los Angeles. Morgan Stanley provided a two-year, floating rate CMBS loan, providing new financing for the outdoor mall, which is located at 10250 Santa Monica Boulevard.

According to a statement from URW, the loan has an option for three one-year extensions with a spread of 280.7 bps over SOFR. The mall, which is 100% owned by URW, is 95.4% leased.  The statement said Westwood Century City was appraised at a value of $1.94B in May by Newmark Valuation & Advisory.

“This new financing for Westfield Century City increases optionality for URW with respect to the asset, and reinforces the [URW] Group’s liquidity,” said Fabrice Mouchel, URW’s chief financial officer, in a statement.

“As stated at our H1 2023 results, the radical reduction of URW’s U.S. financial exposure remains the path forward. The strong business performance across all markets, our low cost of debt, our ample liquidity position, our tight capital expense control and our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio all provide us with flexibility on the timing of this process,” Mouchel said.

Early last year, URW began an effort to sell its US mall assets, resulting in the sale of several properties, generating $1.7B in deleveraging proceeds.

In July, URW completed the sale of two parcels that make up the 1.5M SF Westfield Mission Valley shopping center in San Diego for a total of $290M.

Lowe and Real Capital Solutions (RCS) purchased the 1.1M SF eastern portion of Westfield Mission Valley, an open-air shopping center, while Sunbelt Investment Holdings acquired the western portion, an enclosed power center. The properties, which were built in 1960, are 71% occupied.