The company that owns the Westfield Trumbull mall announced it has sold the property, as well as another mall it owns on Long Island.
A release from Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield put the value of the sale at $196 million.
To read more, please visit News 12 The Bronx.
A Paris-based real estate company has sold its second Long Island mall in two years, as it tries to reduce its debt by unloading its U.S. retail properties.
Westfield South Shore in Bay Shore and Westfield Trumbull in Trumbull, Connecticut, were sold by Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield for $196 million Friday, URW said in a statement Tuesday.
To read more, please visit Newsday.
BAY SHORE, NY — Westfield Mall South Shore in Bay Shore, along with Westfield Trumbull in Trumbull, Connecticut, were officially sold for a total of $196 million last week.
Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, a French company which owns 21 malls in the U.S. and several international locations, said in a news release that it sold the two malls Friday to commercial real estate investment firm Namdar Realty Group.
To read more, please visit Patch.
Global retail landlord Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield ended the year by selling two malls for $196 million to buyers including Namdar Realty Group as it continued its quest to divest its U.S. portfolio coast to coast.
To read more, please visit: Costar
Florence Mall has been on the market for some time, and now a national management group has announced that “It’s sold.”
The ownership group that includes Mason Asset Management and Namdar Realty Group –– the Great Neck, New York-based partnership which leases and manages shopping centers across the country –– has announced their acquisition of Florence Mall at 2028 Florence Mall Road, in Florence.
To read more, please visit Northern Kentucky Tribune
Marley Station mall in Glen Burnie has been sold to a New York-based partnership that says it plans to move quickly to fill vacancies.
The ownership group includes Mason Asset Management and Namdar Realty Group. The partners, based in Great Neck, New York, manage shopping centers across the country.
To read more, please visit The Baltimore Sun
2020 has been a devastating year for retail. The COVID-19 pandemic pummeled an industry that was already struggling to adapt to the rise of online shopping, leading to the announcement of 11,157 store closures for the year — a record, according to CoStar Group, a provider of commercial real-estate data. Nearly 40 major retailers and restaurant companies filed for bankruptcy.
But that’s not the full story.
Smaller mall landlords are also thinking like the major players.
Mason Asset Management, a commercial real-estate investment company that specializes in buying distressed malls, owns 60 enclosed malls around the country. This summer, it purchased its first retail company, Jennifer Furniture, along with a movie-theater chain, Goodrich Quality Theaters.
Elliot Nassim, the owner and president of Mason Asset Management, said the company saw an opportunity “to go vertical” during the pandemic by investing in distressed brands that had promise. Nassim said the rise of home renovation during the pandemic bolstered the company’s choice to purchase Jennifer Furniture, but he also cited the potential for a brand’s longevity beyond its distressed period. Mason Asset Management has six Jennifer locations open.
“The way we see it is there’s a value to these companies that maybe the business world doesn’t appreciate the long-term value of,” Nassim told Business Insider in an interview. “While today maybe the values are depressed and people are calling it quits, as mall operators and landlords, we understand the value of these brands.”
In the case of movie theaters, Nassim said that though the pandemic had essentially halted moviegoing, it would resume its place in American culture once the pandemic passes.
Nassim added that the company wasn’t just buying up brands so that its properties would have tenants.
The theme of brand longevity and history underpins the strategies of many brand-management companies choosing which bankrupt brands to buy.
“It’s not necessarily to sustain the mall — it’s believing in the long-term viability of a Brooks Brothers, a Forever 21, where these things have a place in society,” he said. “Maybe today they just need to be redirected.”
To read more, please visit Business Insider
Lauren Thomas recently interviewed Elliot Nassim, Mason Asset Management, for her story “A risky bet by America’s mall owners: Plucking retailers out of bankruptcy to salvage a pandemic-hit industry”
Two family-owned investment firms that have made a name for themselves in the mall world, Namdar Realty Group and Mason Asset Management, are taking a similar view on investing in retail.
The two have come together over the years to amass a portfolio of dozens of suburban shopping malls. Their business strategy, in sum, is to acquire distressed assets from either banks or other owners, and refurbish them enough to keep them running.
Even during the pandemic, they have acquired three malls — Belknap Mall in Belmont, New Hampshire; Mesilla Valley Mall in Las Cruces, New Mexico; and Meriden Mall in Meriden, Connecticut, Mason Asset Management President Elliot Nassim said.
And they’ve also acquired a local furniture chain, Jennifer Furniture, out of bankruptcy, along with the Grand Rapids, Michigan-based movie theater chain Goodrich Quality Theater, Nassim said, not disclosing the financial terms of those deals.
“We are looking at investing in more retail chains to become a little more vertically integrated,” Nassim explained. “We believe in the future of brick and mortar.”
“We look at it as a wonderful opportunity to be involved in a new sector with promising returns,” he added.
To read more, please visit CNBC.
Bankruptcy documents identify the purchasers as “Goodrich Theater Newco, LLC,‘ with Elliot Nassim of Mason Asset Management in Great Neck, New York as the contact person.
The Cadillac News reached out to Mason Asset Management’s public relations team, who confirmed that Nassim, Igal Namdar and VIP Cinemas have partnered to acquire the Goodrich Quality Theaters chain.
Nassim and Namdar are frequent partners in shopping malls, Reuters reported in June of 2018. Indeed, Mason Asset Management and Namdar Realty operate several in Michigan, including Flint, Jackson, Muskegon, Saginaw and West Branch.
And now they’re buying into the movie business.
“The plan is to continue operations of the existing theatres and grow the brand’s footprint,‘ said Nassim, founder of Mason Asset Management.
To read more, please visit Cadillac News.