Luxury Mall Malibu Lumber Yard Up for Sale
It may be only a little more than 1 year old, but the Malibu Lumber Yard’s owners want to sell the high-end shopping center, which is located not far from the ocean in Malibu, Calif.
Malibu Lumber Yard partners Richard Weintraub and Richard Sperber quietly put the 32,000-square-foot property, located at 3939 Cross Creek Road, up for sale in late July with an asking price of more than $38 million, according to Jay Luchs, executive vice president for CB Richard Ellis and the agent who handles leasing for the property.
“They always planned on building it and selling it. It’s an investment property,” Luchs said of the retail center, which opened in April 2009. “There are a lot of potential buyers looking at it. Malibu Lumber Yard will get a great price because so little is on the marketplace.”
However, a stalled economy might not be a good time to sell a luxury retail property, said Shaheen Sadeghi, a developer and owner of specialty retail malls The Lab and The Camp in Costa Mesa, Calif. “Nobody is selling if they don’t have to.”
Malibu Lumber Yard tenants are high-profile retailers such as Kitson, Tory Burch and Intermix. It also is the address for unique shops such as Maxfield, J.Crew’s concept shop J.Crew-at-the-Beach and the beach flagship store for the James Perse brand.
The center’s top tenants can earn $1,000 to $1,600 per square foot on an annualized basis, according to Luchs. Rent is more than $15 per square foot on the ground floor of the two-story complex.
The center’s development company, Malibu Lumber LLC, owned by Weintraub and Sperber, spent $25 million to construct the project. It was built on the grounds of a former lumber store and is located adjacent to the Malibu Country Mart retail center, home to exclusive shops such as Polo Ralph Lauren, M.Fredric and John Varvatos. Malibu Lumber Yard is also near Malibu Village, where Ron Herman runs two stores. It also is the location where Italian fashion house Missoni will debut a store later this year.
The retail center’s owners have leased the shopping center’s site from the city of Malibu for 39 years. It has the option of extending it to 54 years. The developers’ deal with the city demands the retail center pay $925,000 annually to the city. The city also will receive 30 percent of the mall’s profits when they go north of $2.2 million.—Andrew Asch
