FASHION CENTER PART OF OWNER'S BIG SALE.

Byline: Dave McNary Daily News Staff Writer

The British owner of the Northridge Fashion Center has put the property up for sale, along with all of its American real estate holdings.

The two-story mall, which suffered extensive damage in the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, will be sold as part of a package of six other American regional malls plus office and industrial properties owned by London-based MEPC PLC.

MEPC said late last year that outside assessors had valued the Northridge facility at 106 million British pounds, or about $175 million. MEPC's combined U.S. real estate assets contain more than 13 million square feet with a value of more than $1 billion, spokeswoman Chan Chandler said Thursday.

MEPC will start marketing its U.S. portfolio in December through investment bank Goldman Sachs & Co., Chandler said. Prospective bidders will be asked to submit an offer for the entire portfolio rather than individual properties.

The Northridge property at Tampa Avenue and Nordhoff Street was acquired by MEPC in December 1993, 27 days before the earthquake, as part of the $300 million purchase of another British real estate company, American Trust Properties. The mall, which opened in 1971, suffered more than $130 million in damage from the temblor, including collapsed parking structures and damage to all six anchor stores.

The property reopened in August 1995, later than any other quake-damaged shopping mall in the area, with new flooring, entrances and parking structures. MEPC took a write-down of 31 million pounds in the value of the mall to 106 million pounds on its balance sheet last December, citing the closure of the Broadway store and a slowdown in leasing following the quake.

Northridge Fashion Center currently has 150 stores and contains 1.5 million square feet of retail space. Final rebuilding work began two months ago at the mall's north end when crews started dismantling the former Robinsons-May Home Store, which had never reopened, and began to construct a 10-screen Pacific Theatres multiplex with four restaurants and entertainment-related retail outlets.

The project will be completed next summer and will not be affected by the pending sale, Chandler said. ``We'll be operating business as usual at all our properties,'' she said.

MEPC, Britain's third-largest property investment company, announced plans a month ago to sell its American and Australian businesses in order to focus on its operations in the United Kingdom. It said the foreign holdings generated 48 percent of its fiscal 1996 profit of 95.2 million British pounds.

MEPC shares have underperformed those of most British rivals in recent years. Shareholders have been concerned that MEPC management occupies expensive space in London's West End and the company recently announced plans to move its headquarters to a more modest location. MEPC also plans to distribute at least 300 million pounds from the asset sales to shareholders.

MEPC's other American regional malls include Cumberland Mall in Atlanta, Boulevard Mall in Las Vegas, Valley Plaza in Bakersfield, Regency Square in Jacksonville, Fla., Apache Mall in Rochester, Minn., and McCreless Mall in San Antonio.