Kaufman & Jacobs Acquires Detroit-Area Retail Center

Tel-Twelve Mall. Image courtesy of JLL

Kaufman & Jacobs LLC has purchased a retail center in Southfield, Mich., for $45 million. RPT Realty sold Tel-Twelve Mall, an open-air, 193,850-square-foot property that was built in 1968 and renovated in 2005. JLL represented the seller and procured the buyer.

Tel-Twelve is 20 miles northwest of downtown Detroit at 28400 Telegraph Road, with 62,856 residents within a 3-mile radius. Some 100,000 vehicles travel daily the nearby intersection, Telegraph Road and 12 Mile Road. More than 4.8 million people have visited the retail center in the last 12 months, according to JLL.

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Anchored and junior-anchored by retailers such as BestBuy, Michaels, PetSmart, Ulta, DSW and BuyBuy Baby, the mall was 97.8 percent leased at the time of sale. Meijer and Lowe’s also shadow-anchor the property and Chick-fil-A recently signed a 15-year lease for an out-lot location.

Amy Sands and Clinton Mitchell, managing directors, together with Michael Nieder, director with the JLL retail capital markets investment sales and advisory team, represented RPT Realty.

Retail centers hold strong

According to a recent Colliers report, the Detroit metro retail market witnessed resilient consumer demand in the first quarter of 2022. Net absorption remained positive for the firth quarter in a row, keeping a low vacancy rate of 5.1 percent.

While online shopping and mail-order houses went up 35.2 percent in sales from 2019 to 2020, retail sales also increased during the same period 3.1 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Despite an increase in consumer activity shifting electronic, demand for retail centers holds fast. The issue of an oversupply of ground-floor retail, however, remains, leaving many urban property owners trying to rethink and innovate the industry.