February 1, 2007
National retail players head for the Irish Hills

Dealmakers of the Year: Pacific Coast Business Times

Barbara Pearson
Staff Writer
2/1/2007

In the second half of 2006, Clarice Cornell and Steve Leider of Leider Hayes Commercial Real Estate secured 11 local and national retailers for a new San Luis Obispo shopping center. The duo had been pursuing tenants for the center for two and a half years.

The Madonna Family, well-known for its ownership of the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, broke ground in June 2006 on the Irish Hills Plaza. The plaza is a 140,000-square-foot shopping center along Los Osos Valley Road, adjacent to Home Depot and Costco.

Circuit City occupies the largest space in the new center, with 30,328 square feet. Linens ‘n Things follows with 27,937 square feet. PetSmart and OfficeMax both leased about 20,000 square feet. Old Navy has also closed a deal for space in the center. Most of the lease terms range from 10 to 20 years.

Other national tenants include Beverages & More, Vitamin Shoppe and Panda Express. One 20,000-square-foot anchor space has not yet closed on a lease. Beverages &?More, which signed a lease for almost 11,000 square feet, occupies two Ventura locations, but this is the first venture northward on the Central Coast.

Regional tenants that expanded into the center are Artistic Nails - which currently operates two other locations in Santa Barbara and one in Goleta; It’s a Grind, a coffee shop franchise based in Long Beach; and a small local restaurant.

Circuit City was constructed as a reverse build-to-suit, which allowed it to build the store to its own specifications, then sell it to the Madonna Family and lease back the space.

“Circuit City is the only one that has opened and the rest will dribble in the first half of this year,”?Leider said.

“The developer wanted a mix of local and national tenants,” Cornell said.

The Madonna Family has owned the property and used it as ranchland since the mid-1970s. Alex Madonna started work on developing the site that eventually became Home Depot in the early 1990s.