Kimco buys out partner’s stakes in California malls

Kimco Realty bought out its joint venture partners in a pair of California shopping centers in the Bay Area and Orange County.

The New York-based firm paid $134 million for an additional 85 percent stake in the Brookvale Shopping Center in Fremont and the Anaheim Plaza in Anaheim, according to paperwork filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Kimco jointly owned the properties with Prudential Life Insurance.

Anaheim Plaza is a 348,524-square-foot retail property at the intersection between Euclid Street and the Santa Ana Freeway. The shopping center, built in 1955, was one of the first malls to open in Southern California, according to a 1990 profile by the Los Angeles Times. The biggest tenants in the property are grocery stores El Super, which occupies 54,087 square feet, and Smart & Final, which has 30,000 square feet, according to Kimco’s website.

The Brookvale property, meanwhile, is a 131,000-square-foot retail center that sits at the corner of Fremont Boulevard and Nicolet Avenue. Its biggest tenant is grocery store Lucky, which occupies 48,000 square feet. Other tenants in the space include CVS, Planet Fitness and O’Reilly Auto Parts.

The transactions follow another large retail acquisition by Kimco last year. In October, the firm closed a similar deal, buying the 70 percent stake of joint venture partner Jamestown in a six-property portfolio for $425.8 million. The assets covered in the deal were Publix-anchored properties located in the Sunbelt region. The company then entered a 50-50 partnership with Blackstone for the portfolio.

The firm also recently acquired Houston-based retail REIT Weingarten Investors in a $4 billion deal. The merger grew Kimco’s portfolio to 559 shopping centers totaling 100 million square feet.