Cobblestone Shopping Center gets new owner

David Benda
Record Searchlight
July 21, 2017

One of the Redding’s most distressed shopping centers has a new owner, and the few tenants who do business there hope it means changes for the better are coming.

Ethan Conrad Properties of Sacramento closed on the Cobblestone Shopping Center on Hartnell Avenue about two weeks ago, said Ken Miller of Northstate Commercial Partners.

Ethan Conrad Properties bought the 122,000-square-foot center for $4.7 million.

The shopping center went back to its lender in 2014 after it was foreclosed on. The amount owed on the loan when the center went into default was $14.3 million.

Raley’s had anchored the Cobblestone Shopping Center for 30 years when it closed there in April 2014. The grocer’s departure left a large hole and the center has been struggling to recover ever since.

Michel Czehatowski owns Redding Acupuncture Health Care and East Earth Trade Winds on the south side of the Cobblestone Center, around the corner from the former Raley’s. Czehatowski moved to the shopping center in 2001 and is one of its oldest tenants.

“I think it’s good,” he said of the new owner. “I guess the bank had owned it before and had little interest in doing anything. They just did the minimal.”

But Ethan Conrad, CEO of Ethan Conrad Properties, said upgrades are coming.

“Essentially what my company does is remodel properties like this one and place them in a good, attractive condition and then significantly increase the occupancy,” Conrad said in an email. “To put it in perspective, we’ve probably gone through this same process on well over 150 properties over the last 20 years.”

Ethan Conrad Properties owns more than 6 million square feet of retail, industrial and office space greater Sacramento and the Central Valley. Conrad said the centers have more than 1,100 tenants.

“We’re basically going to be placing the (Cobblestone) center in good, attractive condition that on a scale of 1-10, probably ranks as an ‘8’, ”  Conrad said, noting the current condition of the shopping is a “4.”

Tom LaChaussee, who owns Humble Joe’s Chophouse Grill in the Cobblestone Shopping Center, hopes the new owner gets competitive with rents.

“I think that is what’s going to get people to fill the spaces,” LaChaussee said. “It would seem to me that is the best way to fill it — be aggressive in making deals.”

A portion of the former Raley’s store has a lease pending but Conrad declined to name the tenant.

“Not yet, other than that it is a logical, local tenant,” he said. “We’ve also received strong interest from a variety of tenants, including a relocation of an existing approximately 20,000-square-foot national tenant.”