CHICAGO—The Kimco Realty Corp. owns and operates North America's largest publicly traded portfolio of neighborhood and community shopping centers and has been selling a lot of property recently. As reported in GlobeSt.com, the company recently unloaded several major retail centers in Florida, and now has made a big sale of properties scattered throughout the Midwest.

World Class Capital Group, LLC an Austin-based investment firm, has bought eight Kimco shopping centers located in suburban Chicago, Kansas City, St. Louis, Des Moines, and Oklahoma City. Tenants occupy about 93% of the 1.2-million-square-foot portfolio. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Most of the properties are large shopping centers occupied by Home Depot, Ross, TJ Maxx, Big Lots, Marshall's, Office Depot, and other big-box retailers.

“This purchase from Kimco will allow us to increase our presence across the Midwest for our growing national retail property operating platform,” says Nate Paul, president and chief executive officer of World Class. “We plan to maximize value by performing capital improvements to the properties, filling vacancies, and developing pad sites across the portfolio.”