Starwood Capital acquires seven Westfield shopping centers

Greenwich, Conn. -- Private investment firm Starwood Capital Group announced that an affiliate of Starwood has completed its acquisition of a 90% majority interest in seven U.S. shopping centers from the Westfield Group.



Westfield retained a 10% minority interest in the portfolio.



Starwood also announced that it has formed a new subsidiary, Starwood Retail Partners, to be based in Chicago, to oversee the management of the newly acquired assets and has named Scott Wolstein, co-founder of DDR, as its CEO.



“Shopping centers in the United States are undergoing a transformation as junior anchors and value retailers are rethinking store size and distribution needs, to the benefit of regional malls, including the ones we recently acquired from Westfield,” said Wolstein. “We expect to build on this platform in the years to come.”



Chattanooga, Tenn.-based CBL & Associates Properties has been retained to provide a variety of management services for six of the acquired assets.



The malls acquired from Westfield include: Chicago Ridge Mall in Chicago; Gateway Mall in Lincoln, Neb.; Metreon in San Francisco; Louis Joliet Mall in Chicago; Solano Mall in Fairfield, Calif.; SouthPark Mall in Cleveland; and Westland Mall, Miami. Collectively, the malls consist of more than 6.6 million sq. ft.