UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS, Ohio -- A five-story, 287,000-square-foot shopping center could be sold for less than the average house, after bidding in an online auction Thursday topped out at $155,000.
University Square, a troubled retail complex at Cedar and Warrensville Center roads, is set to change hands after an Auction.com sale that set no minimum bid. The auctioned property does not include two major anchor stores, owned by Macy's and Target, or a central parking garage, which is publicly owned.
Brian Hurtuk, the managing director of the Colliers International brokerage in Cleveland, said the winning bidder is based in Michigan. But he did not know the buyer's name. An Auction.com executive did not return a phone call after bidding closed.
"Our understanding is that they fully intend to close the transaction before the end of the month," said Hurtuk, whose office worked with Auction.com to advertise the property.
"I would have really expected, with the amount of interest we were getting both from the U.S. and offshore, to have a more vigorous bidding process," he added.
In some ways, the $155,000 price tag is shockingly low. The property's current owner, Retail Properties of America, paid $55 million for the shopping center in 2005.
At the time, the space was more than 60 percent occupied, and some of the empty storefronts were nonetheless generating rent. Now, the property is less than 27 percent full, and it's not valuable enough to cover debt service on bonds issued to pay for construction of the garage.
Retail Properties of America, formerly called Inland Western Real Estate Trust Inc., has been covering the shortfalls -- a responsibility the new owner will shoulder until the center starts making more money and its taxable worth rises.
From that standpoint, the $155,000 sale price might be surprisingly high.
After the University Square listing hit Auction.com last month, some real estate experts predicted that the property wouldn't see a single bid. The redevelopment challenge was too great, the vacancy rate too daunting and the special assessments -- the payments required of the property owner if the shopping center isn't covering the debt service -- too onerous.
More than 10 years ago, the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority issued $40.5 million in bonds to pay for property acquisition and construction of the 2,260-space garage. Under a tax increment financing deal, the shopping center's developer -- Starwood Wasserman -- agreed to make debt-service payments instead of property-tax payments. That deal carries a 30-year term.
With higher vacancy, the shopping center is worth less. The property's taxable value is down, and so are the payments generated in lieu of taxes. But the annual debt service requirement, $4 million, hasn't changed. A report prepared for the Port Authority in August predicted that Retail Properties of America would need to cough up nearly $2.06 million in the 2014 tax-collection year to fill the gap.
If the new owner can find a way to recreate value at Cedar and Warrensville Center, then those special assessments would dwindle. Since 2008, when Inland first tried to sell the property, developers have talked about remaking the center with everything from offices to self storage. Retail doesn't necessarily rank high on the list, though it's one of several uses the city wouldn't mind seeing.
"The city is open to any number of uses for that property," Mayor Susan Infeld said during a recent phone conversation. "A call center in that property would be something that would be a known use, 9-to-5. There's plenty of parking. Any white-collar employment like that would bring customers to the stores."