Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield (URW) is set to close a $925 million loan to refinance the Westfield Century City mall in one of the largest CMBS deals in the country this year, and the largest in Los Angeles so far in 2023.
Morgan Stanley (MS) will provide the two-year, floating-rate commercial mortgage-backed securities loan, with the secured overnight financing rate plus 2.92 percent. It’s set to close before the end of the month, according to The Real Deal, which cited a release from Fitch Ratings, a KBRA report and data from Trepp. URW will be required to buy a rate cap of 6 percent.
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Westfield Century City is 95 percent leased. Its value was appraised at $1.94 billion by Newmark in May, implying a loan-to-value ratio of almost 48 percent.
URW completed a $1 billion renovation on the mall at 10250 Santa Monica Boulevard in 2017. Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s and Nordstrom anchor the property and together registered about $200 million in sales in a 12-month period ending in March this year, according to Fitch.
“The property is considered one of the top malls on the West Coast,” Fitch’s report said.
URW has spent a significant part of the past 18 months working to shed its U.S. assets. Earlier this summer, the company sold the 1.5 million-square-foot Westfield Mission Valley shopping centers in San Diego for the discounted price of $290 million, which brought its total retail asset sales to $1.7 billion. Also in Southern California, URW unloaded The Village in the San Fernando Valley for $325 million and the Promenade development parcel for $150 million — both to Rams owner Stan Kroenke. The company also sold the Westfield Santa Anita for $537.5 million.
Gregory Cornfield can be reached at gcornfield@commercialobserver.com
UPDATE: This story has been updated to reflect Newmark’s appraisal value.
