BEVELY HILLS, CA-Barclay's Realty & Management Co. has sold a 16-property portfolio of shopping centers to Weingarten Realty Investors of Houston and BlackRock Realty of Florham Park, NJ for $412 million, according to San Diego-based Burnham Real Estate. The sale involved multiple transactions for properties in California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.

Pete Bethea, SVP and principal with the Burnham Retail Advisors Group, calls the deal "one of the largest retail transactions of its kind this year" and says that it reflects "the strong demand by institutional investors for quality assets in established growth markets." Bethea negotiated the transactions on behalf of Barclay's Realty & Management.

Weingarten acquired seven centers totaling 861,000 sf for a combined price $189.4 million. Four of the centers are located in Washington, two in Oregon and one in Nevada. BlackRock Realty bought nine centers totaling 833,000 sf, eight of them in California and one in Nevada, for $222.65 million.

The properties that sold represent the multi-tenant retail assets managed by Barclay's Realty & Management, a family-owned company that was founded by Ruben Poplawski in 1972. Barclay's, in addition to owning and managing retail assets throughout the West, has developed more than 350,000 sf of other commercial space as well as 961 apartments and condominiums in California and Nevada.

"This was a tremendous opportunity for us to take advantage of a strong seller's market," Poplawski says. He adds that the deals involved "a complex process that included 16 separate loan assumptions" during "a very volatile time in our financial markets."