A joint venture between private equity real estate firm Henderson Park and Los Angeles-based developer Lowe has purchased Westfield Plaza Bonita, a 1 million-square-foot enclosed mall in National City, Calif., for $201.5 million, according to a report by the San Diego Union-Tribune that cites property records. The deal closed July 21.
The sellers were Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. The buying entity, HP Bonita Investments LLC, financed the purchase with a $163 million loan from Morgan Stanley Mortgage Capital Holdings LLC, per property records cited in the report. Westfield disclosed in a regulatory filing that the sale price exceeded the value it had internally assigned to the property.
A 45-year-old mall gets new owners and a rebrand
Built in 1981 on 78 acres at the southern edge of National City and renovated in 2011, Plaza Bonita sits southeast of the interchange of Interstate 805 and State Route 54. It has more than 150 stores and restaurants, anchored by Macy’s, Target, JCPenney and Nordstrom Rack, along with a Round1 Bowling & Arcade, and offers 4,571 parking spaces. The mall drew roughly 11 million visitors over a recent 12-month period, according to Placer.ai data cited by Lowe. Mayer said the property is currently 95% leased.
The new owners have already removed Westfield’s branding from the property. In a statement announcing the deal, Henderson Park managing director Dennis Schiloff said the firm sees “great potential in Plaza Bonita as an asset with very compelling underlying fundamentals” and framed its strategy as elevating the property from an A-minus asset to “a top-tier regional shopping destination.”
Lowe executive vice president Joel Mayer, who leads the firm’s national retail platform, told the Union-Tribune the partners plan to invest in enhanced entrances and customer areas and expand dining with an emphasis on specialty and local restaurants rather than pursue a wholesale redevelopment. “There always is a desire to have better, people-oriented places, so that’s better restaurants and cafes,” Mayer said. “We want this to be more of a community place.” He said the partners will also consider adding residential units to the site, though there are no concrete plans to do so.
Lowe will run day-to-day operations through its Retail reVision platform, while Dallas-based Centennial has been retained as property manager. Eastdil advised on the acquisition, and the purchase expands Henderson Park’s U.S. retail portfolio as the international investment firm continues targeting assets it says can benefit from active management and capital improvements.
The last piece of Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield’s San Diego County retreat
Westfield has owned the South Bay shopping center since 1994, when it entered the San Diego market by buying stakes in several regional malls. It sold a 45% stake in Plaza Bonita to the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board in 2012. Paris-based Unibail-Rodamco acquired Westfield in 2018, forming Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, which has been selling off most of its U.S. holdings since 2021 β including two Mission Valley shopping centers sold to separate buyers in 2023. With the Plaza Bonita sale, Westfield UTC is now the company’s last remaining asset in San Diego County.
Lowe is separately part of a joint venture that previously acquired the 41-acre Westfield Mission Valley East mall, now rebranded as The Valley. Mayer said Lowe sees Plaza Bonita as a similar opportunity, though he noted it needs less work than the Mission Valley property because its anchor tenants are already performing well and vacancy is low.
What it means
The verified facts: a $201.5 million sale, backed by a $163 million acquisition loan, that ends Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield’s decades-long ownership of a second major San Diego County mall. The buyers’ framing of Plaza Bonita as an “A-minus” asset with room to move up, and their plan to prioritize dining and experiential retail over redevelopment, is company strategy and attributed analysis, not an independently verified outcome. What to watch: whether Henderson Park and Lowe’s lighter-touch renovation plan β a contrast with the larger repositioning underway at The Valley β delivers the leasing and traffic gains they’re projecting, and whether Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield moves to sell Westfield UTC next. Compare with Strada Investment Group’s recent $103 million purchase of a San Francisco office building, another example of California commercial property continuing to trade despite broader market caution. More coverage on shopping center and retail investment trends is available on RealtyWire’s commercial real estate page.
