Exiting the 2022 holiday shopping season, Westfield Trumbull has been sold along with a Long Island, N.Y. mall, for $196 million.
Located on 78 acres north of the Bridgeport-Trumbull line just off the Merritt Parkway, the Westfield Trumbull has an 85 percent occupancy rate. Anchor tenants include JCPenney, Macy's and Target, although the mall lost another two years ago with the closure of Lord & Taylor.
Westfield Trumbull is the fifth largest mall in Connecticut after the Connecticut Post Mall in Milford, Danbury Fair, Westfarms in Farmington and Brass Mill Center in Waterbury. Westfield Trumbull's stores employ more than 3,000 people according to the most recent estimates by the town of Trumbull, or nearly one of every five workers who draw paychecks from employers within the town's borders.
Besides the department stores, other marquee tenants include the Apple Store, The Cheesecake Factory, Forever 21 and H&M.
Prior owner Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield had been dangling Westfield Trumbull and other U.S. malls to buyers, as the real estate giant reduces debt it is carrying. In May 2022, the Fitch Ratings subsidiary of Hearst Corp. projected a loss of at least 30 percent on a $118 million mortgage-backed debt instrument secured by the property.
The buyer's identity could not be confirmed immediately on Tuesday. URW had yet to remove its corporate logo and contact information from the Westfield Trumbull website as of Tuesday morning, but the company no longer lists it among the malls URW owns globally.
Trumbull's first selectman told CT Insider that town officials were in the process of gathering information on the details of the sale.
"We had absolutely no knowledge of this sale," said Vicki Tesoro, first selectman for the town of Trumbull. "We knew it was for sale but we had no idea [a] sale was done."
Trumbull is in line for hundreds of thousands of dollars on the sale, via a conveyance tax equal to a quarter of 1 percent of the purchase price. The mall's sale would also generate conveyance taxes for the state of Connecticut, at 1.25 percent of the purchase price.
The town last appraised the mall at $153 million, not including the department store anchor pads and an outbuilding for LA. Fitness that tack on another $31.6 million to the larger property at 5065 Main St. The 2021 appraisal was down $109.5 million from the town's official figure in 2020.
The Westfield Group, an Australia-based predecessor company of Paris-based URW, purchased Westfield Trumbull in 1977 as its first U.S. real estate buy, 13 years after the mall opened. Westfield Trumbull becomes the final Connecticut property to be divested by URW, on the heels of the 2020 sale of the 2020 Westfield Meriden mall. The company once owned the Connecticut Post Mall and the Enfield Square mall as well.
Under URW, Westfield Trumbull had aggressively sought to expand its appeal to draw more foot traffic, to include adding a SeaQuest aquarium and an adjacent apartment complex now under construction.
But URW has been finding buyers for its U.S. malls, prominently to include Westfield Santa Anita in Arcadia, Calif., which sold for $538 million last summer to a California investor, the highest price paid for a U.S. mall in five years according to Chain Store Age.
In a follow-up statement emailed to CT Insider on Tuesday afternoon, Tesoro expressed hope that the Westfield Trumbull's new owner will be an active participant in a land-use and "market feasibility" study that kicks off in February.
"We expect, and the community deserves, that the new owners will invest in the mall property to create a safe and vibrant destination experience for our residents to enjoy," Tesoro stated in the email.
Amanda Cuda and Luther Turmelle contributed to this report. Includes prior reporting by Donald Eng, Eddy Martinez and Paul Schott.
Alex.Soule@scni.com; @casoulman
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CT mall sold with New York mall, first selectman had 'no knowledge' - CT Insider
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