By Mike Hazlip—
Just one month after acquiring the former Sears property at Sunrise Mall, commercial real estate mogul Ethan Conrad has listed the buildings for a combined total of nearly $20 million. An option to lease is also listed.
Listings on the commercial real estate website LoopNet show the main three-story retail building and the former parts and service building are listed together for $16.3 million, which includes 768 parking spaces. The former Sears Auto Center building is listed separately at just under $3 million, with 55 parking spots.
Collectively, the offerings represent over 21 acres of the roughly 100-acre Sunrise Mall site.
An offering brochure from Ethan Conrad Properties shows the former Sears site is currently being remodeled, and also shows it includes three vacant pads with frontage along Sunrise Boulevard. The site has a total of 257,584 square feet of retail space, according to the brochure.
The total purchase price is allocated by level, the brochure shows, with the lower level showroom valued at $3.97 million, the first floor retail for $7 million, and the second floor for $4.51 million. The parts center is listed at under $1 million.
The offering comes just a month after Ethan Conrad purchased the vacant assets from Seritage Growth Properties in a $7 million transaction last November, according to the Sacramento Business Journal.
Questions emailed to Ethan Conrad on Tuesday were immediately responded to by press time Wednesday.
Conrad previously told The Business Journal the best use of the land will be retail, and that he had been communicating with the City of Citrus Heights to determine “desirable retail uses for the property.” He reportedly told employees that retailers are already interested in some pieces of the site.
Conrad said the purchase price was “about equal” to the value of the land, with no additional cost for existing improvements.
The sale of the Sears building is the latest in recent development news for Sunrise Mall, as the city seeks to work with private developers to make the Sunrise Tomorrow plan a reality. The city announced in October that an application was submitted that “lays out a footprint” for a potential hotel at the corner of Sunrise Boulevard and Greenback Lane.
Seritage Growth Properties is a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) formed in July 2015 just before Sears filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2018, reports show. A 2019 AP report shows Sears Holdings filed a lawsuit against former Sears CEO Eddie Lampert alleging he “stripped” the company of more than $2 billion. Lampert denied the allegations, the AP said.
The suit was settled last August, and in the intervening years the properties at the south end of Sunrise Mall have sat vacant as vandalism and criminal activity increased at the site.
