Bentley Forbes Takes Waterfront Mall

The Bentley Forbes Group, based in Los Angeles with an East Coast HQ in Liverpool, NY, has acquired Mitsuwa Plaza here. The three-building, 92,750-sf property is situated on 14 acres along the Hudson River waterfront. The sale price was $13 million.

The new owner simultaneously leased the property back to Mitsuwa Corp. for 15 years on a triple-net bond lease, the latest in a number of sale-leaseback deals Bentley Forbes has done. The company calls its sale-leaseback package the Flexi-Bond Lease Program. “Sometimes clients don’t realize they’re sitting on their biggest asset,” explains company president Frederick Wehba III. “They don’t know how easy it can be to convert that passive asset into capital.”

Bentley Forbes is a national commercial real estate investment firm that specializes in acquiring and owning single-tenant, income-producing properties. While the company is shopping for everything from office buildings to industrial properties, it has been focusing on retail properties to a greater extent. This latest transaction brings the company’s portfolio to over $675 million, with $200 million of that coming since the first of this year.

Sale-leaseback partner Mitsuwa recently changed its name from Yaohan USA Corp. In the last three years, Bentley Forbes has done a total of four sale-leasebacks involving Yaohan. Besides Edgewater, NJ, the others are located in Arlington, IL and Costa Mesa and Torrance, CA.

Under the Yaohan brand name, the Japan-based retailer developed into the biggest Japanese-oriented retail operation in the US. The stores offer a variety of goods and services for Asian and non-Asian customers. The NJ location owes to the fact that a large Japanese community has developed along the Bergen County waterfront, especially in Edgewater and neighboring Fort Lee. The influx of Japanese companies into eastern Bergen County in recent years is the catalyst.

The sale-leaseback was financed by Northland/Marquette Capital of Newport Beach, CA. CB Richard Ellis’ office in that city brokered the deal.