R.H. Estates

Peninsula Center at Hawthorne Boulevard and Silver Spur Road, developed 25 years ago as the first shopping center on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, has been sold by developer Jerry Moss to a San Francisco-based real estate development trust.

The new owner, Sierra Real Estate Equity Trust ‘84, paid $20.6 million for the 23-acre, 120-tenant center, according to spokeswoman Cynthia Schneider. She said the trust will take over management of the complex and may upgrade or expand it. Major tenants are Buffums department store, Thrifty Drug and Safeway and Von’s markets.

Moss, who owns several office and commercial properties in the Peninsula area and is developing a hotel in the Fiji Islands, built Peninsula Center in three stages between 1960 and 1962. He said it was a risky venture “because there weren’t many people here.”

During the next decade, he built 17 shopping centers, three of them in the South Bay. One of them, the 27-tenant Golden Cove center at Hawthorne Boulevard and Palos Verdes Drive West, was purchased 1 1/2 years ago by another Sierra real estate trust. The trusts are affiliated with Sierra Capital Co., which manages $160 million in real estate assets for 19,000 investors.

Moss is about to start construction on a $5 million, 36,000-square-foot office building on Silver Spur near Peninsula Center.