EVERETT — Everett Mall is up for sale — again.
It’s the third effort in two years to sell the shopping center. Jones Lang LaSalle — commonly called JLL — is handling the sale for the joint venture company that owns the property. It consists of Steadfast Companies, which also manages the property, and Canyon Partners, an investment group based in Los Angeles.
Despite competing with Alderwood mall and Seattle Premium Outlets, Everett Mall draws plenty of shoppers. It generates $5.5 million in net operating income a year, Commercial Real Estate Direct reported in August 2015. Canyon Partners and Steadfast Companies, which is based in Irvine, California, declined to comment on the sale.
A stream of shoppers cruised between stores Tuesday afternoon. Dozens of people grabbed a bite to eat at the food court.
Still, there are several empty storefronts and vacant kiosks in the mall. And at Macy’s — one of Everett Mall’s anchor stores — everything is on sale, even the display cabinets. Macy’s announced last month that the location was among nearly 100 stores closing across the country. Macy’s Everett store is on property not owned by the mall.
More stores need to close across the country this year, according to CoStar Portfolio Strategy, a market research firm with headquarters in Washington, D.C.
After a boom in retail construction from 2000 to 2008, the U.S. simply has too much retail space. It needs to slim down or renegotiate lower rents for nearly 1 billion square feet of store space, according to CoStar.
For comparison, that is equivalent to 1,250 shopping centers the size of Everett Mall, which covers about 800,000 square feet.
Everett Mall joined in last decade’s retail building boom after Steadfast bought the mall in 2004 for about $50 million, The Daily Herald reported at the time.
The owners then put millions of dollars into a strip of stores on the west end of the mall parking lot. The expansion — dubbed Everett Village Center — was sold in 2007 to SJ Realty Investments of Ohio. In 2015, the investment group sold the property for $22.5 million to Stockbridge Capital Group, a San Francisco-based company.
Steadfast Companies ran into financial difficulties in 2012, when it defaulted on a $98 million loan, The Daily Herald reported. The following year, Canyon-Johnson Urban Funds — a collaboration between Canyon Partners and former basketball star Ervin “Magic” Johnson — stepped in to put the mall back on steady financial footing.
Dan Catchpole: 425-339-3454; dcatchpole@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @dcatchpole.
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