Ala Moana Center, the largest shopping mall in Hawaii, has a new owner, as Chicago-based General Growth Properties Inc., said Monday that it has sold a 25 percent stake in the Honolulu mall to AustralianSuper for about $907 million.
Chicago-based General Growth (NYSE: GGP) also said that it may sell an additional 12.5 equity interest in Ala Moana Center within the next 60 days to fund a pending acquisition.
Under the terms of the deal, General Growth, which owned a 100 percent stake in Ala Moana Center, will now own a 75 percent equity interest in the mall.
Kevin Berry, spokesman for GGP, told PBN that there will be no changes in the day-to-day operations of the mall.
The transaction values the 2.2-million-square-feet Ala Moana Center at about $5.5 billion, the two companies said.
GGP received about $670 million when the deal closed on Friday, with the remaining $237 million being paid in late 2016 after the mall’s Ewa wing redevelopment is completed.
The Chicago real estate investment trust said that it expects to use the funding to repay about $670 million of debt within the next two months.
In January, GGP said it has spent $391.5 million so far on its redevelopment of a former Sears space at Ala Moana Center, which will add more than 340,000 square feet of new retail space.
It also noted in its 2014 earnings report that the $573.2 million project is expected to be finished by the fourth quarter of this year.
Ala Moana Center ranks as one of the top malls in the country when it comes to sales per square foot, tallying $1,360 per square foot annually, which is good for ninth in the United States.
Its more than 290 tenants, occupying 2.1 million square feet, take in a combined total of about $2.86 billion each year.
AustralianSuper is its country’s largest industry super fund, with more than 2 million members and more than $84 billion in Australian funds under management.
PBN reached out to AustralianSuper for comment.
Last week, WP Glimcher, the Ohio-based owner of Pearlridge Center, the state’s second largest shopping mall, sold about half of its interest to an affiliate of New York’s O’Connor Capital Partners for $1.625 billion.
Duane Shimogawa Reporter – Pacific Business News