Investment Trio Buys New Checker Auto Shop

AVONDALE, AZ-A single-tenant, auto-parts store on a pad site at Avondale Fiesta Shopping Center has traded hands for $1.3 million cash barely two months after its construction. The 6,000-sf building, leased to Checker Auto Inc., was sold by parent company CSK Auto Corp., to Hyperion-Avondale LLC, a group of three local investors that expects to make similar deals in the future.

In the deal, Phoenix-based CSK leased back the two-month-old building for 15 years with a five-year option. Hyperion-Avondale's principals are Jan P. Fincham, Patrick A. Dempsey and Chris Stamets. Fincham and Dempsey are brokers at Lee & Associates Arizona in Phoenix. "We will hold this as an investment, five years or longer probably," Fincham tells GlobeSt.com.

It is Hyperion's first holding, but Fincham says the group is reviewing potential acquisitions, all similar retail properties in the Southwestern US. "We are not just going to be doing single-tenant deals, but this just happened to be a pretty stable investment," he says.

Hyperion's principals chose the Checker Auto building because the company is a national tenant with more than 1,100 stores in 19 states and the Avondale area is rapidly growing with substantial traffic potential. The building sits on a pad site to the new Avondale Fiesta Shopping Center, anchored by a Fry's Marketplace grocery store. "New homes are surrounding this property as well," Fincham notes. "It is a segment of Phoenix that is growing very rapidly." Hyperion represented itself in the transaction as did the locally based CSK Auto.