Barings pays $66.2M for Placentia grocery-anchored center

Barings paid $66.2 million for Village Center at Rose, a 118,876-square-foot grocery-anchored shopping center in Placentia, Calif., buying the property from First Washington Realty. The price equals about $557 per square foot for the 10.15-acre center, which was built 30 years ago, Commercial Observer reported.

Ralphs has anchored the property since it opened, with 44,000 square feet, or about 37% of its leasable space. Roughly 80% of the tenants have operated at the center for more than a decade, a roster that includes Jersey Mike's Subs, The UPS Store, Chase Bank, Carl's Jr. and Carbon Health. The center sits at the northeast corner of North Rose Drive and Alta Vista Street, with roughly 1,100 linear feet of frontage on a road CBRE says carries about 25,000 vehicles daily. Kevin Miller, Barings' head of U.S. real estate acquisitions, said the purchase advances a strategy centered on necessity-based retail and on making portfolio income and cash flow more predictable.

For allocators underwriting open-air retail, $557 per square foot is a usable mark in a supply-constrained market; Ralphs' 37% share of leasable space is the key concentration risk. CBRE's Mark Damiani said more than 147,000 people live within three miles of the center, with average household income of about $154,800 across the five-mile trade area.

First Washington Realty, which focuses on grocery-anchored and necessity-based centers, holds interests in and manages about $8.9 billion across 134 open-air properties totaling 21.3 million square feet. CBRE's Damiani, Jimmy Slusher, James Tyrrell and Shaya McClanahan represented the seller. Barings, a MassMutual subsidiary, manages about $500 billion. As Private Wealth Daily previously reported, Barings provided a $138.6 million first mortgage to Hillwood for an industrial project in Rancho Cucamonga on Oct. 21 — debt rather than equity on that trade.