San Jose shopping center lands local buyer
Retail center could be redeveloped or upgraded
A big chunk of a San Jose shopping center at a prominent intersection has been bought by a busy real estate investor who is already an active player in Bay Area commercial properties.
Mt. Pleasant Shopping Center in East San Jose, located at the corner of Story Road and South White Road, was bought by Intelli, an affiliate headed up by Do Van Tron, a San Jose-based business and real estate executive, according to documents filed on Jan. 31 with the Santa Clara County Recorder's Office.
Intelli paid about $21.3 million for the majority of Mt. Pleasant Shopping Center, the county property files show.
The center has addresses of 3000 through 3098 Story Road, 1105 South White Road, and 1159 through 1171 South White Road, according to the public real estate documents.
Intelli also obtained a $14.4 million loan from CTBC Bank at the time of the purchase.
“This was a very good deal for Tron,” said David Taxin, a partner with Meacham/Oppenheimer, a commercial real estate firm. “He has an innate ability to seek out a good deal.”
A local real estate group led by San Jose-based Cane Cos. sold the retail center to Intelli, the county documents show.
Mt. Pleasant Shopping Center's anchor tenants are a CVS drugstore and a FoodMaxx grocery store. However, the FoodMaxx store property, which is owned by an affiliate of Save Mart Supermarkets, wasn't part of the purchase.
The Intelli firm that's headed up by Tron also is attempting an ambitious transformation of a former Sears store at Eastridge Center in San Jose.
Tron hopes to reshape the shuttered department store in East San Jose as a Vietnamese indoor market, he told this news organization during an August 2022 interview around the time that Intelli bought the Sears retail site.
“I plan to do an indoor market,” Tron said. “It would be like the indoor markets in Vietnam.”
Tron's group paid $24.8 million for the Sears store building. The indoor market would total 260,100 square feet, a project concept for the proposed redevelopment shows.
The just-purchased Mt. Pleasant Shopping Center was being marketed for sale by Colliers commercial real estate brokers John Machado, John Kovaleski, Alex Kovaleski and Hilary Machado Monroe, according to a flyer the agents circulated.
Overall, the shopping center totals 132,600 square feet, including the FoodMaxx building, which is 44,900 square feet.
The portion of the center that was bought totals 87,700 square feet, which includes the CVS, a store that totals 22,400 square feet.
Other tenants in the section of the center that was bought include San Jose Blue Jeans and Fitness 19, the Colliers marketing brochure shows.
The prior owners of Mt. Pleasant Shopping Center had crafted relatively shortterm lease agreements, according to the Colliers agents.
“Ownership intentionally has the majority of the tenant leases expiring in the next two to three years to allow the re-tenanting or redevelopment of this asset in the near term,” Colliers stated in the brochure.
The large surface parking lot creates possible flexibility to add another retail building in the shopping center. It might also be possible for the new owner to bring in a wave of new tenants in the next few years, due to the plentitude of short-term leases.
“The Mount Pleasant Shopping center is a prime candidate for redevelopment or re-positioning,” Colliers stated.
Regardless of the future evolution of the center, what is certain is the retail complex has an excellent location, in Taxin's view.
“This has been a very well-traveled shopping center for decades, on a great corner,” Taxin said.