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COLORADO REAL ESTATE JOURNAL
— September 2-September 15, 2015
Retail
by John Rebchook
Gart Properties recently sold
the City Center Marketplace in
Aurora.
Gart
had
owned
the
234,255-square-foot shopping cen-
ter at 15300 E. Alameda Parkway
since 2000.
“We do hold a lot of things
forever, for sure, so this is a little
bit uncharacteristic for us,” said
Mark Sidell, president of Gart
Properties.
“At the same time, themarket is
in a place where it is appropriate
from time to time to take some
gains,” Sidell said.
Records indicate Gart bought
the property for $6.3 million.
“It was 70 percent vacant when
we acquired it,” Sidell said.
“We kind of bought it by the
pound,” he said.
They sold it for $20.2 million,
or $85.80 per sf, well below the
replacement cost.
While the purchaser wasn’t
identified in the transaction han-
dled by Cushman & Wakefield,
records show it was purchased by
three limited liability corporations
headed by Richard “Rick” O.
Campbell, a seasoned shopping
center investor in the Denver area.
“I did not know Rick before
the sale, although I had heard of
him,” Sidell said.
“He’s a terrific guy,” Sidell said.
“He was real passionate about
closing the deal.”
“It’s a quality asset, and the
price was right and everybody
wins,” he added.
Campbell is familiar with the
area, and he owns a number of
other shopping centers in the
submarket.
“We own Iliff Commons Shop-
ping Center, the Shoppes at Park-
er Commons, and we have proj-
ects at Hampden and Chambers,
Sixth and at Centertech, which
is very close to Sixth and Cham-
bers,” Campbell said.
He said the CityCenter Market-
place is a great value-add deal.
“It has about 75,000 square feet
of vacant space and our goal and
hopewould be to fill that up fairly
quickly,” Campbell said.
“The moon and the stars really
aligned for this sale,” Sidell said.
“We had done the heavy lifting
to fill it up, but we were very judi-
cious of the kind of tenantswe put
into it,” Sidell said.
“We would not just put warm
bodies into the space,” he said.
“We did not want to put in ten-
ants that would not help us draw
other tenants. We waited quite,
some time, for example, to get
a 24-Hour Fitness as one of the
anchors.”
Other tenants at City Cen-
ter Marketplace include Office
Depot, Sherwin Williams, DaVita
and Family Dollar.
The center was built in 1985 at
the intersection of East Alameda
Avenue and Chambers Road.
Some 79,900 vehicles pass the
center each day.
It is a densely populated area,
with 21,122 people living within a
1-mile radius.
The center is 17 miles south of
the Denver International Airport,
4 miles south of the Anschutz
Medical Campus and 2mileswest
of the BuckleyAir Force Base.
It was listed by Jon D. Hen-
drickson and Aaron D. Johnson,
senior directors of the Cushman
& Wakefield’s Capital Markets
Group.
“The acquisition represented a
substantial value-added opportu-
nity for the buyer,” Hendrickson
said.
“The transaction took placewell
below replacement cost and will
allow for competitive future leas-
ing effort,” Hendrickson said.
“Investor interest was gener-
ated from coast to coast for the
offering,” Hendrickson said.
Because it was listed without an
asking price, “We received a num-
ber of offers from bottom feed-
ers,” Sidell said.
However, they also received a
number of offers in the same price
range that Campbell’s grouppaid,
he said.
“This was a good deal for him
and a good deal for us, which is
how transactions are supposed to
work,” Sidell said.
The funny thing is, Sidell said,
if Gart Properties wasn’t selling
City Center and didn’t have a
long history of repositioning it,
“This is the type of property we
would have been very interested
in buying, if someone else was
selling it.”
Other News
n
An unidentified local buyer
paid $1.99 million, or $379.99 per
square foot, for a 5,237-sf retail
building at 696 Sherman St. in
Denver.
The transaction was handled by
Rob Edwards
and
Tom Ething-
ton
of
Pinnacle Real Estate Advi-
sors.
The seller purchased the vacant
Colorado Lace Dry Cleaners
building in 2012, renovated the
property and leased it to Max's
Wine Drive, the Parlour and Flow
Juice Bar.
The buyer intends to own the
building for the long term, accord-
ing to Edwards.
He said that is a good call, con-
sidering the growth in the area.
“With over 600 rental units
under construction in a three-
block radius, this triple-net retail
investment is positioned for long-
term success,” Edwards said.
s
Rick Campbell purchased the City Center Marketplace in Aurora.
