The former Sears location at Fresno’s Manchester Center spanned more than 200,000 square feet. It has been remodeled to create more retail spaces. With the sale of the property earlier this year, a new tenant appears to be moving in.

The former Sears location at Manchester Center has been sold, and a growing Latino grocery chain is showing interest in opening a second Fresno store there.

El Super, owned by Mexican grocery giant Chedraui, has applied for a license to sell beer and wine at the location. A spokesperson for El Super said lease negotiations are ongoing for a chunk of the former Sears that closed in February 2020.

When Manchester Center lost its anchor tenant, it covered a formidable 216,000 square-foot footprint. Since then, the space has been subdivided, with retailers Ross and dd’s Discounts opening there in 2021.

Remaining is a 53,000 square-foot anchor space to the south and an 8,122-square-foot endcap space to the north.

An anchor space of that size is in the range for an El Super location.

The previous owner, New York real estate investment trust Seritage Growth Properties, acquired a portfolio of hundreds of Sears properties in 2015.

Since March 2022 Seritage has been selling in the face of “challenging market conditions,” according to a 2022 year-end update, including higher interest rates, higher construction and labor costs for development, decreased demand for office development and slowing rent growth.

Seritage generated $290.8 million in gross proceeds from property sales for the first quarter of the year, totaling 27 properties across the country.

One of those was the Sears building in Fresno attached to Manchester Center, which has a different owner in Beverly Hills-based Omninet Capital.

Seritage remodeled the cavernous space to bring in more retailers about two years ago. The company apparently did not pay some contractors for the work, according to mechanic’s liens filed in Fresno County.

Seritage sold to Ethan Conrad of Ethan Conrad Properties in Sacramento at the end of March. The purchase price was $10.7 million, according to a filing with the Fresno County recorder’s office.

Founded in 1995, Ethan Conrad Properties has a portfolio of about 9.4 million square feet of commercial real estate, including retail, office and industrial buildings. The firm is vertically integrated, providing its own brokerage, construction, property and facilities management.

The bulk of its portfolio is located in the Sacramento area.

Conrad didn’t respond to messages seeking comment about his purchase of the former Sears building.

For more information about El Super and the former Sears building, see Friday’s print edition of The Business Journal.