Washington Prime to sell its share of 1.2M sf Westminster Mall.

Washington Prime Group has put the remainder of its troubled Westminster Mall up for sale as it offloads its entire mall portfolio.

The Ohio-based investor has listed its share of the 1.2-million-square-foot indoor mall at 1025 Westminster Mall, the Orange County Business Journal reported. The price was undisclosed.

The portfolio purging, which includes Westminster Mall, follows the company’s 2021 Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. The number of its malls on the market was not disclosed.

Over the past year, Washington Prime has sold off half its malls, an unidentified spokesperson told the newspaper. The other half is on the market, or will be listed soon, with the selloff resulting in “massive layoffs” at the firm.

The announcement runs counter to a report by Real Tactics Pro last fall that announced that Washington Prime had found a mystery buyer for its share of the 100-acre property. The sale was supposed to have closed in 45 to 60 days.

What now appears to be a defunct deal came after an $85 million loan secured by the north Orange County mall was sent into special servicing in March of last year for “imminent monetary default,” TRD reported.

Columbus-based Washington Prime later won a six-month extension to work out a sale.

The landlord secured its loan for the mall from JPMorgan Chase in 2014, when the property was appraised at $171 million. By last fall, its valuation has since dropped 39 percent to $104 million, according to Morningstar.

The Westminster Mall opened in 1974 on what had once been the world’s largest goldfish farm, with May Co., Sears and Buffums, followed by J.W. Robinsons. The mall, remodeled in 2008, now includes JCPenny and Target, with its former Sears and Macy’s anchors empty.

In July 2022, Irvine-based Shopoff Realty Investments paid $46.3 million to buy the former Sears at the Westminster Mall, which included the vacant store and 14.1 acres of the retail center. It also bought the Macy’s building and adjacent parking.

Five months later, the city of Westminster hatched a plan to turn the struggling mall into 3,000 apartments in mixed-use complexes across its vast parking lot, of which 10 percent would be affordable.

The revamped mall would include a minimum of 600,000 square feet of shops and restaurants, and up to 1.2 million square feet of retail off the 405 freeway at Bolsa Avenue and Edwards Street.

In all, Shopoff owns 26 acres of the mall, with plans to redevelop the property into a mixed-use village known as Bolsa Pacific at Westminster.

In 2023, the developer unveiled plans for more than 1,000 apartments, 100 townhomes, a 175-room hotel, a 2.5-acre park and 25,000 square feet of shops and restaurants. It had expected to break ground this year, though it’s not clear if Shopoff plans to stick to that timeline.

— Dana Bartholomew