Retail Center Trades Near $31M in Quick Close

"The sellers decided that if we could achieve a quick sale, by the end of January, they were interested in selling," Matlock says. He says that the property, which consists of 179,821 square feet of retail and 36,596 square feet of office space, generated 12 offers from bidders that included national REITs as well as local high-net-worth developers and investors.

Matlock says that A&B, which acquired the center in a 1031 exchange with funds from the recent $50 million sale of its Mililani Community Shopping Center in Oahu, "was the clear choice" among the bidders because A&B's offer amounted to an all-cash purchase and the Honolulu-based company was clearly capable of closing the deal by the seller's deadline, having already closed on the other leg of its 1031 exchange with the sale of the Mililani center. "We thought that anyone who required financing would have been unlikely to close in the seller's time frame," Matlock says.

The Meadows on the Parkway is situated on an 18.6-acre site at the southwest corner of Baseline Road and Foothills Parkway about a mile from the University of Colorado. It is an eight-building center, originally constructed in 1989-1990, that features seven retail-designated buildings and one office building.

The center, which was 83% occupied at the time of the sale, is anchored by a Safeway supermaket, a Rite Aid drugstore and a Michaels, with 33 other retail tenants and 11 office tenants. Matlock notes that the office tenants are on triple-net leases, which is customary in the Boulder market.

Properties in Boulder typically attract strong investor interest because it is a highly regarded market, Matlock notes. Boulder is a difficult environment in which to gain entitlements for new projects, he says, so "A lot of the existing product carries a premium because it's tough to build competing projects.