H Mart Buys San Francisco Shopping Center for $37M

H Mart has gone from anchor tenant to owner of its San Francisco location, buying Oceanview Village Shopping Center for just over $37 million, according to public records. 

The Korean-American supermarket chain bought the shopping center on May 1 through the GSC RE San Francisco LLC, which lists H Mart CEO Il Yeon Kwon as its manager in state filings. 

H Mart opened its San Francisco branch in the Ingleside neighborhood in the southwestern corner of the city in 2021 and is in the midst of planning an expansion into the former 24-Hour Fitness space next door. That would bring H Mart’s presence in the nearly 100,000-square-foot shopping center up to almost 70,000 square feet, including 57 reserved parking spots.

The 2002-era shopping center is built around nearly 340 parking spaces and has been owned by Denver-based Broe Real Estate Group since 2016. There are also 370 condos above the ground-floor retail, which is not part of the sale. 

At the time Broe purchased the property for $30.6 million, the existing tenants included Albertsons, Walgreens, 24-Hour Fitness and Chase Bank. Of those, only Chase still remains, with H Mart subleasing the Albertsons space. 

There’s also a Paris Baguette bakery, Extreme Pizza, Subway and AT&T store. L.A.-based Vietnamese-American coffee and boba shop 7 Leaves Cafe just opened its first San Francisco branch in the shopping center right next to H Mart this month. 

Oceanview Village has an 11,200-square-foot vacant space that can be subdivided, according to marketing material from The Econic Company, the property’s leasing agent since 2021. 

Neither H Mart nor Broe replied to requests for comment. The deal appears to have taken place off market and the agents for both parties are unknown.

Even with its expansion plans, it’s possible that H Mart is not planning on a long-term hold, according to retail agent Cameron Baird of Avison Young. 

“It’s not uncommon for tenants to purchase properties at a discount and write favorable leases for themselves and then sell the property as a net leased investment vehicle in the retail market,” he said.

It happens often enough that there are developers that focus on these types of deals for smaller quick-serve tenants such as Starbucks and In-N-Out, but they are less common for larger tenants such as H Mart, he added.

Lyndhurst, New Jersey-based H Mart has three other locations in the Bay Area — two in San Jose and a new store in Dublin.