Gerrity Group Sells LA-Area Retail Asset

Buena Vista Marketplace. Image courtesy of Newmark

Gerrity Group has sold Buena Vista Marketplace, a 91,846-square-foot retail center in Duarte, Calif. Newmark brokered the $36.5 million transaction on behalf of the seller.

According to CommercialEdge information, the asset last traded in 2017 for $38.1 million.

Completed in 1990, Buena Vista Marketplace is anchored by supermarket Smart & Final Extra. Other tenants at the property include Planet Fitness, Dollar Tree, Wells Fargo, AT&T, The UPS Store, Subway and Jamba Juice.

According to a 2022 end-of-year JLL report, within eight months, the capitalization rates for grocery-anchored retail centers increased from 5.9 to 6.9 percent. The same source reveals that during last year, experiential tenants such as theaters, fitness centers and entertainment venues experienced significant traffic increases.

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Adjacent to Interstate 210, the grocery-anchored shopping center is situated at the intersection of Huntington Drive and Buena Vista Street. Buena Vista Marketplace serves a population of 93,000 residents within a 3-mile radius and the average household income in the area is above $124,000, according to Newmark.

Newmark Senior Managing Directors Rob Ippolito and Glenn Rudy, along with Vice Chairman Pete Bethea, brokered the deal on behalf of the seller. Last month, Gerrity Group partnered with the same brokerage team for the acquisition of Victory Plaza, a 136,580-square-foot, grocery-anchored retail asset in North Hollywood, Calif.

Grocery anchors draw investors to retail properties

Newmark Research and MSCI reported that in 2022, investment sales in the U.S. decreased by 15 percent year-over-year across all property sectors except retail, which recorded a 4 percent increase in sales. This resulted in the retail sector being the only one to show a rise in investment sales, with a total of $85.7 billion, the highest annual figure since 2018.

In a prepared statement, Ippolito remarked that the sale of Buena Vista Marketplace highlights the demand for grocery-anchored retail properties in Southern California, adding that, despite a difficult debt environment, it is still feasible to execute such transactions.

In the previous month, other deals involving grocery-anchored properties in the Los Angeles metropolitan area have closed. Griffin Living sold Griffin Plaza, an 85,022-square-foot, grocery- and pharmacy-anchored retail center in the Los Angeles suburb of Simi Valley, Calif.

IRA Capital sold the Aldi-anchored Poinsettia Plaza, a 157,322-square-foot shopping center in Ventura, Calif., while DPI Retail sold the El Dorado Shopping Center, a 74,500-square-foot retail center in Long Beach, Calif., anchored by Dollar Tree and Grocery Outlet.