Regency Venture Plans Center

CATHEDRAL CITY, CA-Regency Centers of Jacksonville, FL and MDI West of Del Mar will build a grocery-anchored center here on a recently acquired 8.6 acre site as retailing continues its expansion in the Inland Empire. The development site is a vacant parcel at the northwest corner of Landau Boulevard and Vista Chino Road.Regency, a shopping center REIT, and MDI West, which is a privately owned developer of shopping centers, will develop the project via an entity called Cathedral City Rio Vista Town Centre LLC. The partners purchased the property from Del Mar Properties IV LLC. The venture expects to begin construction in the first quarter of 2006 and to have the center open for business by the 2006 holiday season. The center, to be called Plaza Rio Vista, will be anchored by a Stater Bros. supermarket and a CVS Drugs store. The development will also include inline retail shops, restaurants, a bank, and office buildings totaling 85,000 sf, according to Paul Loubet, Regency's VP of investments for Southern California.The Regency project is the latest sign of the ongoing brisk business in new development and retail property sales in the Inland Empire, where housing and population growth have prompted a rapid rise in interest from developers and investors in the past several years. In nearby Rancho Mirage, for example, the city council approved plans recently for a new retail and restaurant venue of approximately 37,000 sf that is called One 11 Plaza and is planned for a site near Highway 111. Developers there plan to proceed after approval of final plans from the city council, which is expected within the next several months.