Media City Mall

Media City Mall is a three level, enclosed regional shopping mall with major tenants including Macy's, Mervyn's (NAP), AMC Theatres, IKEA (NAP), Barnes & Noble, Sears (NAP), Sport Chalet, Circuit City, Office Depot, and CompUSA. The center is comprised of approximately 1,247,506 square feet of leasable space on approximately 37 acres of land. The property is located within Los Angeles County in the City of Burbank.

A Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) acquired this property through a merger and had no previous mall ownership experience. This institution engaged our team to dispose of the asset concurrently with the public announcement of the merger with the goal of closing escrow following the merger. At the time, the mall had a large percentage of its vacancies in a poorly accessible bottom-floor basement retail area. The property, which was also on a ground lease, had also developed a reputation of having significant leasing problems. As a result, the asset had failed to sell on a number of previous marketing attempts through other brokers.

Our team was able to generate eighteen (18) offers for the property through an extensive marketing campaign concentrating on exposing the property to both larger private retail developers and operators and traditional mall REITs. The vacancy concerns were addressed by providing data that spoke to the submarket's strong occupancy rates and the significant barriers to entry for new retail development. The ultimate buyer was able to go non-refundable with their deposit immediately upon the execution of the purchase contract and was able to close within 30 days of the finalization of the merger between the two companies. Considered a significant financial success by the ownership, the final sales price was approximately 57% above Wall Street analysts' expectations.

Return to Case Studies