NORTHBROOK, IL-Jacksonville, FL-based Regency Centers has purchased the 405,227-square-foot Willow Festival neighborhood shopping center here for $64 million. Hamilton Partners sold the 96%-leased property, which is anchored by Lowe’s, Whole Foods and Best Buy.

This is Regency’s second purchase in the North Shore market the second half of 2010. The company paid $18 million to the Adinamis family to buy the Trader Joes-anchored Glen Oak Plaza, a 62,443-square-foot center in Glenview, about two miles south of Willow Festival. Both centers are near the former Glenview Naval Air Station, now a 1,200-acre master-planned community.

“We were up in the area buying Glen Oak, and we scoped out Northville, and saw this property again,” said Stuart Brackenridge, VP of acquisitions for Regency. “Willow Festival had been for sale three years ago, before the crash, and we had put in an offer, but they didn’t sell. We talked to the broker again and he thought he could shake Hamilton loose, and we negotiated to get everyone happy with a deal.”

He said Willow Festival is one of the better centers in Chicago. “The parking lot is just usually jammed full,” Brackenridge says. Regency owns 17 other retail centers in the Chicago area, totaling more than 2.8 million square feet.

Regency is actively pursuing other grocery-anchored properties in the Chicago area, he tells GlobeSt.com. Transactions are picking up, even during the holidays, traditionally a slow period, Brackenridge says. “Owners are starting to see reasons to sell, and people are getting more aggressive on pricing. Plus you have interest rates down, and a lot of capital chasing deals…it’s just a good time to sell,” he says.

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