$150-Plus per SF Offer Sidelines Competitors

"It was such a great price that we couldn't refuse it," Greg Woodring of Henry S. Miller Commercial in Dallas tells GlobeSt.com of the deal presented by David Claassen Investments. Purchased at "above-market prices," the properties were hot on many lists until the would-be takers heard Claassen was again pulling out his checkbook, Woodring confides.

Claassen, a well-known retail owner and developer, acquired a 21,000-sf center at 4101-4117 Lemmon Ave. in Oak Lawn and a 15,200-sf freestanding building at 5425 Greenville Ave. from the Kay Moran Family Trust of Dallas. In both locations, it's tough enough to lease let alone acquire. Market values in both corridors run from $100 per sf to $200 per sf. All that's being said about the actual price is that it exceeded $150 per sf for buildings from the 1970 and 1980 eras.

The addresses were Sound Warehouse locations, then Blockbuster Music and the latest name on the door was Wherehouse Music, a Torrance, CA-based retailer that filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January.

As founders of Sound Warehouse, Moran and Terry Worrell, also a Dallas name, picked some of the best locations to be found in bustling retail marketplaces. Woodring says he has two left to hawk in South Dakota and St. Louis.

The Dallas locations were put on the leasing market about three months ago, both "A1 inner city retail assets" that immediately got the attention of Claassen, who was shopping around but had yet to buy. "The property wasn't for sale," Woodring says, noting minds changed when Claassen put the "above-market" offer on the table. "He paid prices as though they were full and leased." Pike Chapman of Dallas steered the deal for Claassen.

The 21,000-sf Lemmon Avenue center's only vacancy is the 12,420-sf Wherehouse Music space. With Starbucks as an end cap draw, a bank, gymnasium and high-end furniture retailer are talking for the space. Greenville Avenue, says Woodring, has piqued the interest of a national health-products retailer.

Claassen intends to give the Shops at Lemmon Avenue a "facelift" while focusing on a repositioning of the Greenville building by reconfiguring the space and replacing a stucco wall with glass on the side that enjoys 120 feet of frontage along the popular thoroughfare. And, Woodring says, it's a safe bet that the end product will bring at least $30 per sf when the sites are ready to be leased.