Coreland Re-tenants Imperial Promenade

ANAHEIM, CA-Imperial Promenade, a 50,000-square-foot shopping center here, is now 100% leased after an infrastructure change in 2008 prompted many tenants to leave. Owners DeBeikes Investment Co. and Warmington Properties enacted a proactive strategy to re-tenant the once 30%-vacant retail center—and it worked.

“We launched a complete repositioning and re-tenanting effort in late 2010 and kicked it off with the hiring of the Coreland Cos.' leasing team,” said Brittany DeBeikes, director of acquisitions and investments for DeBeikes Investment Co., in a prepared statement. “Our goal was to improve the façade of the center, attract quality high-end tenants and rebrand this destination lifestyle center to serve the needs of the Anaheim Hills community.”

Imperial Promenade was a well-positioned shopping center along Imperial Highway until Cal-Trans constructed an overpass to reroute traffic along the highway over an adjacent railroad track and constructed a 30-ft. wall to do so—severely blocking visibility to the center. The property quickly began to lose tenants and, by late 2010, had reached 30% vacancy, a drastic change from previous decades of 95% vacancy.

“The overpass essentially buried nearly half of our tenants and completely took away our visibility,” DeBeikes tells GlobeSt.com. “Before, we had a lot of street access in Anaheim Hills.”

DeBeikes adds that tenants who had been in the center for decades suddenly saw their clientele begin to fall and sales plummeted. “A number of tenants up for renewal were not interested. And having occupancy fall to 70% at a time when the economy was under such challenge didn't help, but there was nothing we could do about it—Cal-Trans wanted to move forward on the project.”

In came Coreland Cos.' Ben Terry and Matt Hammond, a “brand-new leasing team with fresh energy,” according to DeBeikes, and helped the partnership brainstorm on how it could create a destination center that would help its tenants be successful. They developed a plan to create synergies among the tenants that would cater to the existing customer base: women who were patrons of a high-end hair and nail salon at the center.

To that end, Coreland signed a Pure Barre Pilates studio, Nekter Juice Bar, Fine Wine & Spirits, Fuji Grill, Anaheim Bike Shop and Curry Out restaurant, among other tenants, offering a studied mix of tenant improvements and concessions to attract and retain them. A frequent sight at the center is women in yoga pants forming a line out the door of the juice bar.

The team “backed off after a while, and people came,” says DeBeikes. Soon, deals at the shopping center were being done for an average of 25 cents per square foot per month higher than at the competing properties, despite the apparent obstacles and without national tenants.

As of a few short weeks ago, “Imperial Promenade is now 100% occupied and 100% preleased,” says DeBeikes. “It took from the beginning of 2011 until the middle of 2013.”

As GlobeSt.com reported last month, Coreland Cos.' brokerage division has been awarded two new leasing assignments totaling a quarter million square feet. Located in Brea and Fountain Valley, the two properties increased Coreland's leasing portfolio to over three million square feet in Orange County.