Westfield misses deadline to pay off loan on Valencia mall

Debt of $195M sent to special servicing in October

Unibail Rodamco-Westfield’s Jean-Marie Tritant and 24201 West Valencia Blvd in Valencia
Unibail Rodamco-Westfield’s Jean-Marie Tritant and 24201 West Valencia Blvd in Valencia (Unibail Rodamco-Westfield, Getty)

Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield has missed its deadline to pay off a $195 million loan connected to the Valencia Town Center mall in Santa Clarita.

The CMBS loan — provided by UBS and Barclays — was due this month, after entering into special servicing in October, according to a Trepp report. A representative for Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield did not respond to a request for comment.

A month before the loan was placed into special servicing, Fitch Ratings downgraded it “due to an anticipated increase in defaults,” according to a September report. Fitch said Valencia Town Center was the “largest contributor to losses” among the properties connected to the loan.

Valencia Town Center at 24201 West Valencia Boulevard was about 82 percent occupied in the first half of 2022, with anchors including Macy’s and JCPenney. The 1.1-million-square-foot shopping center is located in the affluent master-planned city of Santa Clarita in northern L.A. County.

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Sears vacated a store at the mall in 2018 amid its Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings — a space that has not been filled since — though the loan is not secured by that portion of the property.

Paris-based URW has worked to sell off its regional shopping centers in the U.S. over the last two years. The firm has shown little hesitation to give properties back to lenders: in Florida, URW handed over the keys to four properties in foreclosure.

In August, URW sold the 1.5-million-square-foot Westfield Santa Anita mall to Monrovia-based investor Wen Shan Chang for $538 million. The firm has also sold two Woodland Hills malls to entities run by Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke for a total of $475 million.