SAN JOSE, CALIF. — Barry Slatt Mortgage Co. has arranged a $27 million loan to refinance Sunrise Plaza, a 112,805-square-foot shopping center in San Jose. Behzad Boroumand arranged the 10-year, fixed-rate CMBS loan with full-term, interest-only payments on behalf of the undisclosed borrower. Dick’s Sporting Goods anchors the center.
GRAND PRAIRIE, TEXAS — Swedish furniture retailer IKEA has opened a 290,000-square-foot store in Grand Prairie. The store is the company’s fourth location in Texas, with plans to open stores in the San Antonio and Fort Worth areas in 2019 underway. Construction of the store created about 500 new jobs, with an additional 250 workers joining the IKEA team as it became operational.
SPRING, TEXAS — Hunington Properties Inc. (HPI) has brokered the sale of Postwood Shopping Center, a 42,232-square-foot retail center located at 5639 Treaschwig Road in the northern Houston metro of Spring. The property, which is shadow-anchored by Kroger, was built in 1985 and renovated in 2009. Current tenants include Chase Bank, State Farm Insurance, Boost Mobile and Anytime Fitness. Rafael Melara of HPI represented the seller in the transaction. Gary Smith of RCR Realty represented the buyer, a local investor.
CHICAGO — Time Out Group, a London-based media company, has unveiled plans to open a 50,000-square-foot food hall in Chicago’s Fulton Market. Time Out Market Chicago is slated to open in 2019. The vendor lineup will feature several of the city’s top restaurants and bars. The three-story space will include 16 chef-driven counters, three bars, a demonstration kitchen, a retail area, outdoor dining space and seating for 600 people. The first market from Time Out, located in Lisbon, Portugal, opened in 2014. Additional markets are slated to open in the United States in Miami (2018) and Boston (2019).
The retail market in Connecticut is alive and well. Sure it’s changing but what industry doesn’t experience change? There are numerous retail categories that continue to post healthy sales while also keeping their new store counts in a growth trajectory. Other categories will adapt to consumer trends and stay relevant in the world of brick and mortar. As we close 2017, we see that traditional shopping centers, especially grocery-anchored centers, are the solid performers in the sector. The “services” or “daily needs” category of retail continue to flock to these centers mainly because of consumer routine. The “services/daily needs” category includes health/fitness, traditional sit-down restaurants, quick-service restaurants, pharmacies, pet supply retailers, wireless communications, medical (walk-ins) and banking. Traditional neighborhood centers are becoming more conscious about merchandising with this specific category while trying to avoid deals with the more risky retail categories, such as off-priced apparel. The big-box power centers and the centers with large chunks of vacancy are another story, and there will be winners and losers. Geography plays a big role here and it’s not the dead-end road that some suggest. Over the past 18 months, my team’s exclusive leasing portfolio has had two Kmart closures in two separate …
SHELBURNE, VT. — Nedde Real Estate has arranged the sale of a commercial building located at 2613 Shelburne Road in Shelburne. Premier Strength & Performance, a personal fitness and conditioning gym, purchased the building from LWV Properties for an undisclosed price. The buyer has opened a fitness center at the 3,564-square-foot building. Fernando Cresta of Nedde Real Estate brokered the deal.
HOUSTON — Capital Retail Properties (CRP), in a partnership with Wile Interests Inc., will develop Market at Houston Heights, a 30,000-square-foot retail and restaurant destination in northwest Houston. The property will be located at 1533 N. Shepherd Drive fronting Laird and West 16th streets. Individual components will include a 4,000-square-foot structure allocated to dining, 26,000-square-foot mixed-use building, 3,000-square-foot plaza with seating for community events and 160 parking spaces. The developers expect to deliver space for tenant build-out in the fall of 2018.
COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS — Oldham Goodwin Group LLC has arranged the sale of a 72,718-square-foot store leased to Academy Sports + Outdoors located at 2511 Earl Rudder Freeway in College Station. Oldham Goodwin Capital, the investment arm of Oldham Goodwin, sold the asset to a Texas-based private investor for an undisclosed price. Clinton Oldham represented the company internally in the sale, other terms of which were not disclosed.
PERRIS, CALIF. — HFF has arranged the sale of Perris Plaza, a 150,148-square-foot, grocery-anchored retail center in the Inland Empire community of Perris. Gleb Lvovich and Bryan Ley of HFF arranged the transaction on behalf of the seller, Condures Family LP. Nuevo Perris LLC, a joint venture between Wood Investments, Joel Farkas and SandTree Holdings, acquired the asset for an undisclosed price. At the time of sale, Perris Plaza was 97.6 percent leased to tenants including Food 4 Less, Regency Theatres, Burger King, IHOP, Del Taco and Starbucks Coffee. The sale also included two entitled land pads that would allow the development of additional retail space. The new owners plan to expand the shopping center to approximately 300,000 square feet with the addition of new retailers and restaurants.
SYDNEY AND PARIS — Europe’s largest commercial property firm Unibail-Rodamco is set to acquire U.S. and U.K. mall owner Westfield Corp. (ASX: WFD) for $15.7 billion. Paris-based Unibail-Rodamco owns and operates a portfolio of 69 shopping centers across major European cities including Paris, Madrid, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Munich, Vienna, Warsaw and Prague. Sydney-based Westfield operates 35 malls in the U.S. and U.K., including Westfield World Trade Center, which opened to major success in New York City in August 2016; Century City, Westfield Fashion Square and San Francisco Centre in California; and Westfield London and Stratford City in the U.K. Following the transaction — expected to close in the first half of 2018 — Unibail-Rodamco will own and operate a portfolio of 104 commercial properties across 13 countries valued at about $72.2 billion. The company will be headquartered in Paris and the Netherlands, with regional headquarters in Los Angeles and London. Westfield has made a name for itself in the industry under billionaire chairman and co-founder Frank Lowy by transforming outdated malls into viable shopping centers for modern consumers. “The transaction announced today is the culmination of the strategic journey Westfield has been on since its 2014 restructure,” says Lowy. “We see this …