Apartments in Store: Developers Eye Underutilized Retail Centers for Multifamily Conversions

By Jack Witthaus

CoStar News

April 11, 2022 | 11:01 AM

When the world locked down in early 2020 to curb the spread of the coronavirus, the

disruption gave fresh impetus to efforts by Chris Tourtellotte and his father, Charlie, to

secure a lender for a massive redevelopment project they had planned in Burbank,

California.

The pair, who run Los Angeles real estate firm LaTerra Development, had ambitious

plans to transform a former Fry's Electronics store into a 10-acre mixed-use center with

more than 850 apartments and 150,000 square feet of office space along with restaurants

and parking.

They found financial backing in the form of Priyesh Bhakta, president of L.A. private

lender Hankey Capital. Despite the economic uncertainty, Hankey Capital agreed to lend

on the project.

The Tourtellottes are now gearing up to start construction in the fall on one of the

biggest apartment construction endeavors in greater Los Angeles. The roughly $450

million project joins a wave of retail-to-residential conversions across the country as

investors look to breathe new, profitable life into underperforming properties.

Nationally, there may be 20% more retail space than currently needed, fueling the

apartment conversion trend, according to Richard Green, director of the University of

Southern California Lusk Center for Real Estate.

"The land value of apartments has exceeded the land value for retail," he said.

"Economically, it's a more effective way to use the land."

These transitions have a long history, but the pandemic has sped the transformation of

the retail landscape by driving consumers to online retailers and away from certain

brick-and-mortar shopping, particularly large enclosed malls, and the volume and scope

of retail-to-apartment conversions appears to have ticked up.

In the Seattle suburb of Lynnwood, a Sears store was knocked down to make way for a

328-unit luxury apartment complex called Avalon Apartments, which opened in 2021. In

Owner Sells Westfield Mall Eyed by Los Angeles Rams Owner Kroenke for

Training Site > >

RELATED CONTENT

South Jersey, around 1,000 apartments are planned to be built at the Moorestown Mall

as part of a broader construction effort to breathe new life into the retail property,

according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. Closer to L.A., in Orange County a developer

wants to convert the aging, nearly 675,000-square-foot Laguna Hills Mall into 1,500

apartments, as much as 465,000 square feet of offices, roughly 250,000 square feet of

retail and a hotel with as many as 150 rooms, according to previous CoStar reporting.

Overstock

These conversions come as some physical retail, mostly serving dry goods, has suffered

in the past two decades while demand for housing keeps rising.

Even before the pandemic, it was widely acknowledged the U.S. had built too much retail

real estate, and the nation may have to slash as much as 1.1 billion square feet from its

retail inventory to return to past levels of in-store sales productivity, according to

CoStar research.

That overbuilding, coupled with severe housing shortages in many cities, makes retail-

to-apartment deals increasingly common. Hankey Capital's Priyesh said his company

frequently lends on deals similar to the Burbank Fry's redevelopment. It now has more

than $200 million in land loans in Southern California.

For LaTerra, the $450 million Fry's redevelopment is the largest of a string of smaller

retail-to-apartment projects in greater Los Angeles the developer is tackling.

"It's a function of what's the highest-and-best use, and many cases that's not retail,"

Chris Tourtellotte said. "The pandemic has accelerated that trend. Urban, infill retail is

struggling more now."

Los Angeles appears to be a hotbed of the activity, spurred in large part by a severe

shortage of housing, especially at the less expensive end of the market. With more then

10 million residents, the county is the largest in the nation, and it needs to add more

than 800,000 housing units by October 2029 to meet the goals of the state-mandated

Regional Housing Needs Assessment that requires cities and counties to plan for

population growth.

There are a lot of retail sites from which to choose. Rand Corp., a nonpartisan Santa

Monica, California-based policy think tank, found 2,300 potentially underutilized Los

Angeles County commercial properties, including retail, office, hotels and motels, that

could be repurposed to produce between 72,000 and 113,000 housing units in L.A.

County, according to a study released April 6. Those housing units add up to about 9% to

14% of the total of what L.A. County needs to produce to meet its Regional Housing

Needs Assessment goals.

That stock of "underutilized" property arises even as L.A.'s retail market is contracting.

Retail inventory fell more than 570,000 square feet year over year as of April 7, a figure

that may shrink in the coming months and years, according to CoStar data.

A mere 4% of retail supply was added between 2010 and 2020 across the U.S., according

to CBRE, showing how selective developers have become with building brick-and-mortar

shopping centers.

Beyond L.A., cities including Philadelphia, Seattle, San Jose, Minneapolis and Detroit

have all seen retail inventories shrink in the past year as total U.S. retail inventory

expanded by a minuscule 0.2% as of April 8, according to CoStar data. A mere 44 million

square feet of retail space was built in 2021, the lowest annual total recorded in over 15

years.

Meanwhile, roughly 378,000 apartments were added year over year in the U.S., a 2.1%

inventory growth as of April 8, according to CoStar data.

Changes Underway

Among the conversion projects underway or about to launch in the Los Angeles region is

another former Fry's Electronics site at 6100 Canoga Ave. in the Los Angeles

neighborhood of Woodland Hills, which is slated to be redeveloped into 880 apartments.

The 34-acre Westfield Promenade, a dead mall, is expected to become apartments, a Los

Angeles Rams practice facility and more.

In November, Canadian developer Onni Group bought three properties with a combined

68,000 square feet of retail space for $68 million in Long Beach, Los Angeles County's

second-largest city, to convert the real estate into apartments. And this month,

developers revealed plans to redevelop a retail center near the desirable Beverly Hills

and West Hollywood markets into a mix of uses, including more than 100 luxury rental

residential units.

Earlier this year, Los Angeles developer Balboa Retail Partners met with residents of the

city of Santa Monica to discuss its plans to redevelop the 60,000-square-foot Lincoln

Center retail property with 521 apartments and 36,000 square feet of retail, including a

grocery store.

"Like many retail shopping centers today, there's a great opportunity to modernize the

retail, right size the retail and provide a better environment for the community we're

already in," Alison Warner, senior vice president of Balboa Retail Partners, said in a

recorded Jan. 11 community meeting. "We also have the unique opportunity to add

much-needed housing."

USC's Green said there may be a causal relationship between retail space shrinking in

some places and the growing number of apartment units.

"It's very profitable to build apartments," Green said. "Retail space is just dead."

Witthaus, Jack. “Apartments in Store: Developers Eye Underutilized Retail Centers for Multifamily Conversions” Costar, Costar, 11 April. 2022, https://www.costar.com/article/1870315309/apartments-in-store-developers-eye-underutilized-retail-centers-for-multifamily-conversions