Passco Pays $62M for Kentucky Multifamily Property

LEXINGTON, KY—Irvine, CA-based Passco Companies has acquired the 306-unit The Henry at Fritz Farm multifamily development here, part of the master-planned The Summit at Fritz Farm development here.

Colin Gillis, VP of acquisitions at Passco reports the firm paid $62.4 million from the Dobbins Group of Birmingham, AL. The Henry at Fritz Farm is integrated into The Summit at Fritz Farm, which is being developed by Bayer Properties of Birmingham, AL. The community features more than 280,000 square feet of Class A retail with a mix of local, regional and national tenants, including notable anchors Whole Foods, William Sonoma, Pottery Barn, lululemon and Anthropologie.

The Summit also plays host to 20 restaurants including J Alexanders, The Barn: a nationally-recognized local-fare food hall, and the state of Kentucky’s only Shake Shack. The Summit features a high-end office component and a soon-to-be-opened 120-room upscale Origin Hotel, the boutique hotel brand’s third location in the United States.

Completed in 2017, The Henry at Fritz Farm features a mix of one-bedroom, two-bedroom, and three-bedroom flats with modern design elements including open-concept floor plans, nine-foot ceilings, plank flooring, oversized patios or balconies and oversized windows.

Dobbins Group engaged the Cushman & Wakefield/Commercial Kentucky team of Mike Kemether and Craig Collins to market The Henry for sale.

Among the property’s amenities include a resort-style saline swimming pool with oversized sundeck, poolside fire pits, a clubroom with a coffee bar, a business center and conference room and a 24-hour fitness center with yoga classes. All buildings are elevator served, offer internal air-conditioned corridors, and include a resident/guest call system.

Gillis touts the affluence of the Lexington community as a key driver to its decision to purchase The Henry at Fritz Farm property.

“Lexington is a very wealthy, established community that continues to grow and create numerous new high-paying jobs, and that is certainly reflected in the absorption rate and the on-site demographics at The Henry,” Gillis says. “The property has one of the most affluent tenant bases of any community in any market in which we have ever acquired, and perhaps the lowest rent-to-income ratio in our portfolio.”

He notes that the metro Lexington economy has for years been led by healthcare and tourism, but relates that recently thanks to strong job and population growth the region has begun to attract Fortune 500 companies including Amazon and Xerox.

The top employers in the region are the University of Kentucky, Toyota, Amazon, Lexmark International, and Lockheed Martin.

Gillis adds that as The Summit at Fritz Farm’s retail and hotel properties mature, the firm’s newly acquired multifamily asset will “gain further momentum and realize its full potential.”