PAC Grabs Hines REIT’s Last Retail Property

By Barbra Murray, Contributing Editor

Champions Village, Houston

Houston—Preferred Apartment Communities Inc.’s acquisition of the last remaining retail asset of Hines REIT, which is in the process of dissolving, has reached completion with the purchase of Champions Village, a 403,000-square-foot shopping center in Houston. Acting through its wholly owned subsidiary, New Market Properties, PAC snapped up Champions Village for $52 million, wrapping up an eight-property, grocery-anchored portfolio buy from Hines REIT.

Developed between 1974 and 1978, Champions Village occupies 32 acres at the intersection of Cypress Creek Parkway and Champion Forest Drive, surrounded by a handful of affluent neighborhoods in Northwest Houston, including Champions, Greenwood Forest and Huntwick. The open-air shopping center is approximately 86 percent leased to 51 tenants ranging from national retailers to independent upscale stores, with a Randalls market heading up the tenant roster in a 61,600-square-foot space under a 45-year lease scheduled to expire in 2019. The occupancy level is likely to go on the upswing in short under the new ownership if PAC’s statistics are any indication—the company’s retail portfolio was 94.4 percent leased at the close of the second quarter.

“The acquisition of Champions Village increases the size of our retail portfolio to 31 grocery-anchored centers across seven Sunbelt states, consistent with our strategy to acquire well-positioned grocery anchored centers in suburban Sunbelt markets with strong demographics,” Joel Murphy, president & CEO of New Market Properties, said in a prepared statement. New Market relied on a five-year floating-rate loan from Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. to finance the purchase.

The closing of the Champions Village transaction comes approximately two months after New Market bought seven of the eight properties in the Hines REIT portfolio. The price tag on the entire collection, which spans four states, was $209.1 million.

Image via the Champions Village Facebook page