GGP sells Boston’s Faneuil Hall Marketplace

BOSTON – General Growth Properties Inc., the No 2. U.S. mall owner and owner of Providence Place, sold Faneuil Hall Marketplace, a shopping and dining complex in Boston, for $140 million, Bloomberg News reported.
The transaction was one of three sales of “noncore” assets completed in the last three months, the Chicago-based company said in a statement last week. General Growth also sold the office and garage components of Westlake Center in Seattle for $119 million and Riverside Plaza, a strip shopping center in Provo, Utah, for $21 million. The buyers weren’t disclosed.
“We continue to execute our investment strategy of focusing on our regional mall portfolio,” Shobi Khan, General Growth’s chief operating officer, said in the statement. “These recent dispositions strengthen our balance sheet.”
The deals helped the company eliminate $95 million of mortgage-related debt associated with the properties, according to the statement.
General Growth, which left bankruptcy protection in November, is the second-biggest U.S. shopping mall owner after Simon Property Group Inc.
In August, General Growth said it would spin off 30 malls to shareholders through a special dividend and that they would be transferred to a new, publicly traded, real estate investment trust, Rouse Properties Inc. &#8226