Hampshire Buys 113,000-SF Center

LYNDHURST, NJ-The Hampshire Cos. continues its buying spree on behalf of its Hampshire Partners Fund VII, this time picking up a major retail property. The firm has acquired Veterans Square Town Center, a 113,348-sf shopping center situated on 12.3 acres at 540 New York Ave. here. The seller was the Edgewater-based Railroad Junction Associates, a group headed by Fred Daibes of Daibes Enterprises. The sale price was not released.

“It was an excellent opportunity for us to enhance our retail portfolio,” says Norman A. Feinstein, executive managing director of the Morristown-based Hampshire. “It will offer our investors additional revenue opportunities.”

While the center is fully leased, the value-add comes in the form of clearance for an additional 16,300 sf of retail space on the site. The property is anchored by a 60,000-sf ShopRite supermarket, and other tenants include Staples, Washington Mutual, Blockbuster, GNC and Supercuts.

Railroad Junction Associates had acquired the former Penco industrial site, used for pharmaceutical and pesticides manufacturing, in the late 1990s and, after remediation, opened the shopping center seven years ago. The shopping center site of is part of a larger 17-acre Penco tract, with most of the rest of the acreage now in use as a 475-space NJ Transit parking lot.