Victoria Gardens Mall Almost Sets Sale Price Record

It didn’t take long for Brookfield Properties and Queensland Investment Corporation to find a buyer for the Victoria Gardens shopping center in Rancho Cucamonga.

After listing the retail property earlier this month, Brookfield and Queensland sold the 1.2-million-square-foot shopping center to Newport Beach-based Redwood West and Irvine-based Panattoni for $530 million, Commercial Observer reported. That sale price makes it one of the highest ever paid for a retail property in Southern California and the highest paid in recent years.

The duo partnered with Prime Finance and Prism Places for the deal and received acquisition financing from Ares Real Estate to complete the purchase.

Investor Wen Shan Chang holds the record for the largest retail deal with his $538 million acquisition of The Shops at Santa Anita in Arcadia in 2022. Other SoCal malls have fetched nine-figure deals in the past two years, including Hines’ $428 million purchase of Runway Playa Vista in Playa Vista; Pacific Retail Capital Partners, Lyon Living and Silverpeak’s $332 million acquisition of Lakewood Center mall in Lakewood; and Stockdale Capital Partners’ $157 million payment for The Oaks mall in Thousand Oaks.

Victoria Gardens is 98 percent leased to approximately 160 retailers and restaurants. The mall is ranked as the fifth-busiest open-air shopping center in the nation with 14.7 million annual visitors, according to Placer data cited by Commercial Observer. The new ownership plans to invest more than $50 million into the property with improvements to landscaping, signage and common areas.

Brookfield is cutting down its retail holdings in Southern California. In December, the firm began searching for buyers for its Figat7th development in downtown Los Angeles. The 330,000-square-foot property is 85.8 percent occupied and is expected to sell for roughly $70 million, The Real Deal previously reported. Farther south in San Diego County, Brookfield sold the 727,000-square-foot main portion of The Shoppes at Carlsbad in September to Steerpoint Capital and Steelwave for $71.5 million.

— Chris Malone Méndez