BH Properties has hired a 30-year industry veteran to accelerate the expansion of its retail portfolio and oversee its repositioning of high-profile properties including one it just bought in Seattle.
BH, a Los Angeles real estate investment firm, said it has appointed Greg Sullivan, who worked for more than 20 years at Brookfield Properties and predecessor GGP in the Chicago area, as managing director of its retail properties division.
For the past six months Sullivan has served as a retail consultant to BH Properties and advised the firm on several acquisitions including its purchases of Anchorage Square in San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf area and Lincoln Road, a 130,000-square-foot retail center in Miami’s South Beach neighborhood.
BH is bringing on Sullivan in an executive position as the firm identifies and purchases retail properties at discounted prices that offer potential investment upside. For instance, last year when it bought Anchorage Square, it paid $65 million for the roughly 200,000-square-foot center that seller Anchorage Holdings, an affiliate of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, bought in 2004 for $95 million, according to CoStar data.
This week at the annual ICSC trade group conference in Las Vegas, BH is expected to announce its latest retail deal, the acquisition of Pacific Place. The approximately 335,000-square-foot upscale entertainment-and-shopping center has a 1,164-space below-grade parking garage and is near the Pike Place Market tourist attraction in downtown Seattle.
A five-story indoor regional shopping mall, Pacific Place's tenants include AMC Theaters, luxury retailer Tiffany and Taiwanese restaurant Din Tai Fung. The mall is about a mile from the Olympic Block mixed-use office building BH bought in April in Seattle's Pioneer Square neighborhood.
"With the mall’s current occupancy at roughly 45%, BH Properties plans to attract local, regional, and national retailers" to create "a shopping experience with a uniquely Seattle flavor," BH said,
As part of his new job, Sullivan has been tapped to leads BHs transformation of Pacific Place.
“This acquisition marks a significant step in our retail growth and is exactly the reason we brought aboard a retail leader of Greg’s caliber,” BH President Jim Brooks said in a statement. Pacific Place’s "location boasts all of the economic and demographic support required to restore it as Seattle’s premier shopping experience.”
During his three decades in retail real estate, Sullivan focused on the development, management and leasing of regional malls, power centers, outparcels and mixed-use projects. At Brookfield, he oversaw leasing, merchandising, and negotiations for big-box retail spaces. He closed nearly 300 lease transactions covering a total of more than 10 million square feet with national brands including Dick’s Sporting Goods, REI, Costco, Trader Joes, Sprouts, TJ Maxx-Homegoods-Marshalls, Dave & Buster’s, AMC, Barnes & Noble and Best Buy.
In addition to working at Brookfield and GP, which Brookfield acquired in 2018, Sullivan spent four years at The Mills Corp., a Washington, D.C.-area retail real estate investment trust that Simon Property Group and a capital partner bought in 2007.