:no_upscale():quality(75))
Retail giant J.C. Penney plans to sell its Plano HQ in a partial leaseback that would reduce outstanding debt and help the chain raise cash.
CBRE Capital Markets is marketing the three-story, 1.8M SF Class-A campus; it's likely to sell for about $360M, according to the Dallas Business Journal. Any prospective buyer would have about 650k SF of office space; J.C. Penney is retaining the rest.
Since a failed restructuring four years ago, J.C. Penney has been struggling with a severe cash shortfall and $5.3B of long-term debt. Two years ago, the company sold off a huge chunk of land around its HQ but kept a stake in the resulting development. The strategy raised hundreds of millions of dollars.
The department store chain cited the booming commercial real estate market in Plano as the reason for this timing. [DBJ]
