ORLANDO-Pine Hills Marketplace, one of the oldest open-air community shopping centers in the metro area, has a new owner in Ram Development Co. of Palm Beach Gardens. Ram paid Chula Properties I Inc. of Palm Beach County $13.5 million, or a below-replacement-cost price of $51.13 per sf, for the 45-year-old, 264,000-sf, 92%-leased property on West Colonial Drive (State Road 50) and Hiawassee Road in West Orlando.

The Miami office of Cushman & Wakefield of Florida Inc. brought the buyer to the seller. The deal took 30 days to complete, from contract signing to closing. Cushman & Wakefield's Mark Gilbert and Adam Feinstein handled the transaction. Ram represented itself.

Gilbert tells GlobeSt.com the deal was done at this time because of "regularly programmed selling by the owner of various properties in its portfolio." Buyer or seller ran into no special environmental or governmental challenges before closing the deal, Gilbert says.

The average asking gross rent range at Pine Hills Marketplace is $14 to $18 per sf. "With a number of anchors having below market rents and near-term lease expirations over the next five years, Pine Hills Marketplace is perfectly positioned as a significant redevelopment opportunity in the not-too-distant future," Feinstein says. "I expect that Ram, over the next 24 to 36 months, will engineer a major redevelopment of this asset to include significant capital upgrades and new anchor tenants."

The center's current 27-tenant roster includes Big Lots, Family Dollar, Auto Zone, Foot Locker and the Caribbean Marketplace. Gilbert says Pine Hills Marketplace was "a property that we were able to sell off-market due to special circumstances which benefited both seller and buyer."