Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust is now the former owner of the Voorhees Town Center after having sold the property for $13.4 million after receiving an unsolicited offer, according to PREIT Chief Executive Joseph Coradino.
Coradino said the decision to sell the property came at a time when PREIT was “unofficially informed” that one of the mall’s anchor stores intends to close.
The Voorhees Town Center is anchored by two stores, a Macy’s and a Boscov’s, although Coradino did not say which anchor store would be leaving the Town Center, and he did not say when such closure was expected to take place.
PREIT first purchased the Voorhees Town Center, formerly the Echelon Mall, in 2003.
The executive briefly discussed the sale, among other topics, during PREIT’s third quarter 2015 earnings conference call with investment analysts on Oct. 28.
“We were unofficially informed that one of the anchors plans to close their store and believed it was an opportune time to respond to an unsolicited offer and execute on this sale,” Coradino said.
Also left unidentified by Coradino was the mall’s new owner.
PREIT’s quarterly earnings report, released on Oct. 27, only listed the “disposition of Voorhees Town Center” for $13.4 million and a net of credits issued to the new owner.
The report noted the sale of the Town Center marked the eighth mall PREIT had sold as part of the group’s overall portfolio improvement strategy.
Coradino said PREIT has had continued success in disposing of lower productivity and lower growth assets such as the Voorhees Town Center, which he categorized as a transaction PREIT had not previously discussed, but was pleased to have completed.
“Voorhees Town Center had the lowest sales in our portfolio, at $261 per square foot,” Coradino said.
In neighboring Cherry Hill, Coradino said Cherry Hill Mall, also owned by PREIT, was inching closer to sales of $700 per square foot.
According to Coradino, PREIT is also in the process of selling three of its other properties in Pennsylvania.
In addition to the Cherry Hill Mall, other New Jersey properties owned by PREIT include the Moorestown Mall and the Cumberland Mall in Vineland.
During its ownership of the Voorhees Town Center, the property underwent extensive changes.
When residents rejected a proposal for a new Wal-Mart in 2005, former anchor stores Sears and JCPenney were demolished, with condominiums, office space and retail stores added along a landscaped boulevard.
The municipal government of Voorhees even became part of the redesign when the township’s former municipal building on Haddonfield-Berlin Road become obsolete and municipal offices moved to a new location within the Town Center in 2011.
Aside from rumors preceding the announcement of the sale, Voorhees Township administrator Larry Spellman said he and Mayor Michael Mignogna had no official notice from PREIT regarding the sale until learning about the transaction from local news media.
Although the township owns the property where its municipal offices now sit, Spellman said he was still surprised PREIT did not reach out to the township.
“We own our space here, so it’s not as though there’s any change for us, and probably why they felt they didn’t need to talk to us is because we’re not one of their tenants,” Spellman said.
