CERRITOS, CA-A partnership of the Santa Monica-based Macerich shopping center REIT and Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board has secured a $200 million mortgage on the 1.3-million-sf Cerritos Center shopping mall. MetLife Real Estate Investments placed the financing, which is a five-year, floating rate first mortgage with an initial funding of $130 million and up to $70 million available in future fundings.
Richard Benner of MetLife's Los Angeles office led the transaction team for the financing of the property, which is anchored by Nordstrom, Sears, Mervyn's and Macy's. The mall is situated near the intersection of the 91 and 605 freeways, at 183rd St. and Gridley Road.
The new mortgage, an interest-only loan, may be used for improvements at the mall or for other purposes. The mortgage is the second large financing of a Macerich property reported this week, following the Santa Monica-based company's $61.2 million loan on its 1.1-million-sf Crossroads Mall in Oklahoma City.
In its conference call with financial analysts last week to discuss its quarterly results, the publicly held REIT said that it would rely on borrowings as one source for its continuing development pipeline. The REIT plans to develop and redevelop about $300 million to $500 million of retail properties yearly for the next five to six years.
The new mortgage is the latest in a series of financial moves lately by Macerich, which arranged a new $1.5 billion credit line in July, an increase from the previous credit line of $1 million. At the same time, it reduced its borrowing spread for the credit line to by a quarter of a percentage point to 1.15% over LIBOR and extended the line to April 2010 from its previous expiration of July 2007.
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