There’s No Discounts at This Strip Center

Commercial brokers assumed there was a mistake when they saw the sales brochure touting a 10,000-square-foot strip shopping center on Harbor Boulevard in Anaheim.

The Lee & Associates brochure listed a price of more than $5 million, more than five times the going rate for a center of that size.

But it was no mistake, said Chuck Noble, president of Lee’s Orange office. The small center adjacent to Disneyland recently sold to a Pacific Rim investment firm, TML, for $5.6 million, a record high price for that area. Why was a center that houses a variety of fast-food outlets, film processing and souvenir shops so appealing?

“There is a tremendous amount of foot traffic from hotels,” Noble said. It’s a case of location, location, location. If you took that center and moved it one-eighth of a mile away, rents drop off dramatically.

And rents are high, at $5 per square foot a month, four or five times what similar tenants pay in other parts of the city.

Because of the limited amount of retail in the area, shops there can charge much more for basic items such as sunblock or sunglasses. Noble’s firm was enlisted by bankruptcy attorney Marshack & Goe, which sold the asset to bail an individual out of bankruptcy.

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Melinda Fulmer covers real estate for The Times. She can be reached at (714) 966-7832 and at melinda.fulmer@latimes.com