Another Southern California shopping center has traded hands.
Phillips Edison & Company paid roughly $25.8 million for the retail plaza at 312 South California Avenue in West Covina, Commercial Observer reported. The Ohio-based retail-focused real estate investment trust acquired the 46,800-square-foot property from Golden East Investors.
The price works out to $511 per square foot.
The shopping center was 88 percent occupied at the time of sale. Tenants include Bank of America, California Fish Grill and America’s Best Contacts & Eyeglasses. The property is across South California Avenue from Pacific Retail Capital Partners’ Plaza West Covina mall, anchored by tenants like Macy’s, JCPenney, Nordstrom Rack and Best Buy.
It is the latest retail property in the Los Angeles area to find buyers over the past two years. Unanchored strip centers such as this “have continued to perform very well” in the greater Southern California market amid demand is strong from institutional investors, private capital and 1031 exchanges, said JLL’s Daniel Tyner, who arranged the deal on behalf of the seller.
Last month, Asana Partners acquired the Seacliff Village plaza in Huntington Beach from Barings for $151 million, marking the first sale of the 253,300-square-foot property since it was developed in the early 2000s. The price comes to $596 per square foot.
In July of last year, Regency Centers dropped $357 million for a five-property retail portfolio at the Rancho Mission Viejo master-planned community between the ritzy Orange County enclaves of San Juan Capistrano and Coto de Caza. Bridgepark Plaza, Mercantile West, Mercantile East, Terrace Shops and Sendero Marketplace, spanning 630,000 square feet. That deal amounted to $567 per square foot.
Macerich has been trimming its retail holdings in Greater Los Angeles as part of this trend. It sold The Oaks mall in Thousand Oaks to Stockdale Capital Partners for $157 million in 2024. And it sold the 2-million-square-foot Lakewood Center mall in Lakewood for $332.1 million in August. Buyers Pacific Retail Capital Partners, Lyon Living and Silverpeak plan to transform the Lakewood property into a mixed-use development.
Phillips Edison & Company, one of the nation’s largest owners and operators of grocery-anchored shopping centers, notched one of Los Angeles County’s top 10 priciest retail deals of last year. The firm spent $31.3 million for Foothill Park Plaza, a 43,600-square-foot shopping center in Monrovia. That price pencils out to $718 per square foot.
Last week, Brookfield Properties and Queensland Investment Corporation listed the Victoria Gardens shopping center in Rancho Cucamonga with undisclosed pricing guidance.
— Chris Malone Méndez
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