Inland Real Estate JV Picks Up 180KSF Princess Plaza in Indiana

By Barbra Murray, Contributing Editor

Inland Real Estate Corp. and Dutch pension fund advisor PGGM add another asset to their portfolio with the acquisition of the Princess City Plaza in Mishawaka, Ind. The four-year-old joint venture, which targets grocery-anchored and community retail centers in the Midwest, purchased the 178,500-square-foot shopping center with cold hard cash.

Princess City doesn’t carry a big-ticket price tag — it sold for $28.6 million — and it doesn’t sit in a big-ticket metropolitan destination, but it does have some of the big-ticket features that attract the investment community: high occupancy and a solid market. The property, built in 1998, is 99 leased to a roster of tenants that includes Dick’s Sporting Goods, Old Navy and PetSmart, as well as shadow anchors Whole Foods Market and Kohl’s.

And then there’s the location. Just a few miles outside of South Bend, Princess City Plaza sits within the bustling University Park trade area near the University of Notre Dame. Additionally, the property benefits from its position within St. Joseph County, which is second only to Indianapolis as the second-largest retail market in the state of Indiana.

Inland and PGGM’s purchase of Princess City Plaza comes roughly one month after the joint venture’s $43.3 million acquisition of the first phase of the 471,800-square-foot Newport Pavilion grocery-anchored center in Newport Kentucky, just a stone’s throw from Cincinnati. “With (the Newport Pavilion) acquisition, to date we’ve acquired $681 million of assets for our joint venture with PGGM,” Mark Zalatoris, president & CEO of Inland, said during the REIT’s earnings conference call in August. “At full investment, the PGGM joint venture portfolio is expected to total $800 million to $900 million in gross asset value and provides us with a captive acquisitions pipeline of high-quality properties and infill locations.”