MONSON, MA-The Mayo Group has picked up the family-owned Monson Main Street Shopping Center here at 107-123 Main St. from Armata Development for $5.8 million. The 60,000-sf property represents the first grocery-anchored retail acquisition for the Mayo Group, which owns a number retail properties in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, but focuses primarily on commercial and residential properties.

"We haven't made a concerted effort to go into grocery-anchored retail, but this was a good project, " Taran Grigsby, general counsel for the acquisitions arm of Mayo, tells GlobeSt.com. "It's got to have a good fit geographically to work for us." Based in Boston, Mayo Group has assets in Springfield, Worcester, Lynn, and Keene, NH, and provides property management services through those offices.

The shopping center is located in Monson, which is essentially a suburb of Springfield, MA. Anchored by an IGA Foodliner, the center also has national retail chains Brooks Pharmacy and Dunkin' Donuts, a restaurant and a Post Office. Carl Christie of NAI Hunneman represented the seller and procured the buyer in the Monson Main Street Shopping Center transaction.

Mayo owns and manages more than 1,800 residential units and over one million sf of office property. The company's largest retail property is located in Keene, NH, a 200,000-sf asset consisting of two separate shopping centers, Colony Hill Market Place, an old mill converted into a specialty shop center, and the Center at Keene a 120,000-sf mall.