Colorado Real Estate Journal - September 2, 2015
Gart Properties recently sold the City Center Marketplace in Aurora. Gart had owned the 234,255-square-foot shopping center 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, the market 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 handled 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 Shopping Center, the Shoppes at Parker Commons, and we have projects at Hampden and Chambers, Sixth and at Centertech, which is very close to Sixth and Chambers,” Campbell said. He said the CityCenter Marketplace is a great value-add deal. “It has about 75,000 square feet of vacant space and our goal and hope would 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 judicious of the kind of tenants we put into it,” Sidell said. “We would not just put warm bodies into the space,” he said. “We did not want to put in tenants 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 Center 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 2 miles west of the Buckley Air Force Base. It was listed by Jon D. Hendrickson and Aaron D. Johnson, senior directors of the Cushman & Wakefield’s Capital Markets Group. “The acquisition represented a substantial value-added opportunity for the buyer,” Hendrickson said. “The transaction took place well below replacement cost and will allow for competitive future leasing effort,” Hendrickson said. “Investor interest was generated from coast to coast for the offering,” Hendrickson said. Because it was listed without an asking price, “We received a number of offers from bottom feeders,” Sidell said. However, they also received a number of offers in the same price range that Campbell’s group paid, 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 Ethington of Pinnacle Real Estate Advisors. 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, according to Edwards. He said that is a good call, considering the growth in the area. “With over 600 rental units under construction in a threeblock radius, this triple-net retail investment is positioned for longterm success,” Edwards said.