December 29,2018
It’s one giant step toward a new vision for Visalia’s Sequoia Mall. The mall’s owner, developer Dave Paynter has confirmed he has purchased the Sears building and its huge 430 car parking lot. But the future of the Visalia Sears store itself, is not yet clear.
In a note to this newspaper Paynter wrote “An Affiliate of Paynter Realty & Investments Inc., Caldwell Mooney Partners I, L.P. a California limited partnership purchased the property occupied by Sears from Seritage Growth Properties in a transaction that recorded December 27.”
The acquisition of the 75,570sf Sears building by Paynter will allow the developer to move to finalize plans to rebrand the Sequoia Mall, hampered before by the fact that Paynter did not own the large Sears parcel that extends to the corner of Mooney and Caldwell. The purchases also includes the Sears Auto Center.
Piece of the puzzle
Quoting from Paynter’s note “The Buyer also owns the Sequoia Mall portion of the center and sees the acquisition as another piece in the puzzle of the redevelopment of the entire center.”
Seritage had been trying to lease out half the Visalia Sears building but was unsuccessful.Their marketing brochure declared the property is located at the “best retail intersection in the city.”
Seritage is a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) based in New York that is a spinoff from Sears Holdings. Seritage owns almost 42 million square feet of real estate, mostly affiliated with Sears. When Sears closes Seritage benefits by renting the space out for a reported 4X what Sears was paying. In this case, Seritage decided to sell.
What now for Sears?
Now that Sears has declared bankruptcy it may or may not liquidate – close all their stores- including Visalia.Late last week Sears won a possible reprieve after its chairman, Eddie Lampert, submitted a $4.4 billion bid to buy the retailer and potentially keep 425 stores open. The list of stores is not yet available. A bankruptcy court will hear about the bid and objections from creditors on January 4. As of 2012 the company operated 4,000 Sears and Kmart stores.Now they hope to save 425.
Once the nation’s biggest retailer, Sears was known as the place you can buy almost everything, even a prefab home. Today the company has clearly lost its mojo struggling to survive the new retail market realities.The 125-year-old firm still has more than 68,000 employees.
In 1991 Walmart surpassed Sears as the nation’s largest retailer as Sears faced tough new competition from big-box stores. In 2004 Sears went shopping for Kmart hoping that would help stem a decline It did not as online shopping strengthened and Sears closed more stores including more than 350 Sears and Kmarts in 2017. That trend continues into 2019 as the Visalia Kmart is about to close.
Most bet the Visalia Sears store will not survive as well.
As sad as this might be – it offers a chance in Visalia to knock the place down and start over. The City of Visalia has been working with Paynter on his project since he bought the Sequoia Mall – 23.5 acres minus Sears and Hobby Lobby – in December 2013.
Over those past five years Paynter has done little to redevelop the mall property promising city officials that he is “working on it”. Paynter has been busy in the meantime, up and down Mooney, redeveloping and re-tenanting three major shopping centers on the big boulevard including those anchored today by Kohl’s/Ross, the center now anchored by Walmart /Burlington/ Ashley Furniture and the Dicks Sporting Goods center – all mostly filled.