An investor group that last year opened the Hồng Phát grocery store at Eastport Plaza has purchased the entire shopping center.
The buyer, Eastport Plaza Shopping Center LLC, acquired the Jade District shopping center for $28 million, according to a deed filed with Multnomah County. The group is led by Hồng Phát founder and CEO Brandon Wang and primary care physician Hoang Nguyen.
The deal comes in addition to Wang and Nguyen’s $20 million purchase, in late 2023, of the 154,000-square-foot former Walmart at 4200 S.E. 82nd Ave. They bought the Eastport Plaza location from the national retailer, which had closed it in March 2023 because it wasn’t doing enough business.
The Hồng Phát Supercenter that opened there last July sells Asian foods as well as American, Eastern European, Middle Eastern and Latino groceries. It includes a wholesale section for small-format grocers and local restaurateurs to buy in bulk, and a food court.
It’s the first time since the 1990s that the shopping center has changed ownership, according to real estate brokerage SRS Real Estate Partners, which represented the buyers.
The new owners plan to leverage their connections in the business community, including among Asian American business owners, to make the shopping center “the centerpiece of the 82nd corridor,” brokers for the owners said in a statement, as first reported by the Portland Business Journal. And as with the former Walmart purchase, Portland-based Ethos Commercial Advisors said it arranged the financing on this deal for the buyers.
The shopping center also hosted a mid-autumn festival, organized by the White Lotus Foundation, in its parking lot last September, drawing a record 5,000 attendees for food, games, music and other festivities, according to the Southeast Portland Bee.
The Hồng Phát Supercenter at Eastport Plaza boasts a colorful range of Asian foods, as well as a wide selection of American, Latino, Eastern European and Middle Eastern groceries.Lucas Brehm
In an interview, Nguyen said talks to buy the shopping center were underway in October 2023, even before the deal for the former Walmart closed.
New owners hope to attract a constellation of small- and mid-sized tenants, owned by women and businesspeople of color, to complement existing tenants, a recruitment process that Nguyen expects to fill his 2025. In addition, department store Marshalls is expected to open in the shopping center later this year, he said.
The new owners are looking to make the shopping center “cleaner and more attractive,” Nguyen said.
“We’re going to spend some money to improve it,” he said. “At the same time, we’re going to try to cut down some of the operating costs so our current tenants, and our future tenants, will benefit” from reduced charges to maintain common areas.
Wang and Nguyen have been partnering on real estate deals for more than a decade. They had gotten to know each other by both being active in Portland’s Vietnamese American community, attending the same events and fundraisers.
Nguyen shopped at Wang’s Hồng Phát store in Northeast Portland. “One day I was telling him, ‘Hey, your store is always packed with customers,’” Nguyen said. “‘Why not open a bigger store?’”
The doctor had heard from a patient that the former Safeway on Southeast 82nd Avenue at East Burnside Street might hit the market. He told Wang.
“Unbeknownst to me, he just had a broker reach out to Safeway about this,” Nguyen said.
That set in motion a series of events that culminated in the purchase of the former Safety into which Hồng Phát expanded in 2013 — and the first of several deals they’d do together, including their latest purchase.
Nguyen said they want to serve the community.
“We are very small, local guys,” Nguyen said, but they bring people together. “That’s through our years of partnership and friendship.”
— Jonathan Bach covers housing and real estate. Reach him by email at jbach@oregonian.com or by phone at 503-221-4303.
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