Capping off a break-out year with one of its largest retail deals in Q4, Eastern Union Funding’s Eli Breiner negotiated an acquisition loan for Cheltenham Square Mall in Cheltenham, PA.
Breiner structured a two year bridge loan with a floating rate without recourse, a unique loan product in which stabilized retail meets rehab and all costs are serviced by the same debt. The loan was provided by a national balance sheet lender.
The 85-unit, 634,000 s/f mall is anchored by big-box tenants, including Burlington Coat Factory, The Home Depot and Shop Rite.
It was purchased out of receivership and is emblematic of the increasingly outdated big-box mall.
Sun Equity Partners, a New York-based firm which has successfully turned around thousands of similarly distressed residential and retail units, purchased the retail product for $30 million and will renovate to essentially “de-mall” the asset, opening outparcels and repositioning the property as an in-line shopping center.
The deal, however, is not entirely a construction story, as the anchor stores and occupied shops continue to generate proceeds.
Sun Equity Partners won’t merely keep Cheltenham afloat, according to Breiner, “They will blow it out of the water and realize the potential that wasn’t allowed by outdated retail strategies and a slumping economy.”
Sun Equity Partners, which owns over 10 million square feet of real estate throughout the US, recently completed construction on a new BJ’s Wholesale store in Howell, NJ. Breiner also arranged financing for that deal.
