The longtime owners of a prominent Koreatown retail center sold it for a record $91M.

The price tag for the Koreatown Plaza at Ninth Street and Western Avenue works out to about $453 per SF, CoStar reported, above the $436 per SF average for the area. It’s also the priciest Koreatown retail center transaction in the last decade, according to CoStar.

The buyer was LA-based INI Investment Corp.

The seller, Los Angeles-based Korean Shopping Center Inc., developed the 140K SF enclosed mall, which opened in 1988. It holds shops, a food court and, since 2019, an H-Mart, a popular Asian American grocery chain.

The property went on the market in early March 2020.

“This center has benefitted from its strong upscale tenant base that is relatively e-commerce-resistant as the online retail evolution continues,” CBRE’s Johnny Choi said in a statement at the time. Choi and CBRE’s Timothy L. Bower had the listing, according to a release from CBRE. CBRE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

That line of thinking seems to have persisted over the past two years of the pandemic.

"Some investors think shopping centers geared toward specific ethnic communities will be more resilient to e-commerce," CoStar Group Senior Director for Market Analytics Ryan Patap told CoStar.

Koreatown's roughly 11M SF retail market has a vacancy rate of 3.8%, below the greater LA average of 5%, according to CoStar.