KingSett Capital has acquired a 50 per cent stake in the CF Masonville Place in London, Ont., which it calls a “dominant regional shopping centre,” on behalf of the firm’s KingSett Growth LP8 Fund.

KingSett made the announcement via a LinkedIn post.

CF Masonville Place is a 686,000-square-foot enclosed shopping centre with approximately 160 stores, restaurants and services. It had been anchored by one of two Hudson’s Bay stores in the southwestern Ontario city, prior to the department store chain’s bankruptcy earlier this year.

The centre’s current mix of retailers includes SilverCity Cinemas, The Rec Room, Sportchek / Atmosphere, Marshall’s / Homesense, a Shoppers Drug Mart, Best Buy and Apple store among others. It is also home to a 2,600-square-foot Tesla showroom and test drive location, which was a new concept in Canada for the global electric vehicle manufacturer when it opened about a year ago.

“This investment aligns with the Growth Fund’s focus on providing sustainable in-place cash flow and meaningful opportunities for long-term value creation.” KingSett said in the LI post.

Financial details of the transaction have not been released.

The history of Masonville Place

The shopping centre is located at 1680 Richmond St N. at the intersection of Fanshawe Park Rd. E. Opened in 1985, it is located adjacent to several other retail centres which are clustered at the intersection, including a Loblaws grocery store. 

It also benefits from a London transit hub in the parking area.

CF invested over $77 million in a series of major refurbishments and renovations at the mall from 2015 to 2017, which was the facility’s first major upgrade in over three decades. That had been prompted in part following the departures of two previous major department store chains, Sears and Target.

KingSett Capital has become an active buyer in recent months, with CF Masonville Place marking its second major acquisition from Cadillac Fairview in the past two months. It also acquired the Pender Place office complex in downtown Vancouver from CF and IMCO in August for a reported $125 million – for the LP8 fund.

The two towers at 700 and 750 West Pender comprise approximately 292,000 square feet of space, including a small retail component on the ground floors. They are also connected by an atrium to the CF Pacific Centre next door, the main retail complex in the city’s downtown core.

KingSett's Growth LP8 Fund

KingSett’s Growth LP8 Fund is the latest in a series of closed-end growth funds by the Toronto-based firm. It launched in August 2022 with an initial commitment of $2 billion in equity.

The strategy has raised a total of over $7 billion of capital across the eight funds, according to KingSett’s website.

Cadillac Fairview is the real estate division of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, with approximately $28 billion of assets under management.

It manages approximately 31 million square feet of leasable space at 57 properties across Canada, including CF Toronto Eaton Centre, 160 Front, the Toronto-Dominion Centre in Toronto, CF Carrefour Laval in Greater Montreal, the CF Chinook Centre in Calgary and CF Pacific Centre.