John Williams Shops Hines For Prominent Retail Portfolio
Iconic apartment developer and founder of Post Properties John Williams is buying a grocery cart-full of shopping center properties from a fund operated by Hines Interests.
Williams' New Market Properties, a division of his Preferred Apartment Communities, is under contract to buy eight retail properties from Hines REIT for $209.1M, or $198/SF, including three prominent suburban Atlanta centers. The deal is expected to close in August. The Atlanta properties include:
- Sandy Plains Exchange, a 73k SF center more than 98% leased and anchored by Publix Super Markets, whose lease expires in 2019, and pays some $400k/year in rents.
- Cherokee Plaza (below), a 103k SF shopping center that's fully leased and anchored by Kroger, which recently renewed through 2032 and pays an annual rent of $1.4M.
- Thompson Bridge Commons, a 93k SF Kroger-anchored center that is more than 97% leased. Kroger just renewed there until 2028 with an initial rent of $800k/year.
Other properties in the portfolio include the BJ's Wholesale Club-anchored Shoppes of Parkland, a 146k SF shopping center on more than 20 acres on the outskirts of Miami; the Publix-anchored University Palms, a 99k SF shopping center just outside of Orlando; Heritage Station, a 73k SF Harris Teeter-anchored property in Wake Forest, NC; Oak Park Village, a 64k SF fully leased center anchored by HEB Grocery Co in San Antonio; and Champions Village (below), a 404k SF super regional shopping center in Houston that's more than 85% leased and anchored by both Randall's Food Markets and Stein Mart.
According to information supplied in an SEC filing, Preferred Apartment Communities will spend some $900k over the next two years improving the properties. And the company is in the process of arranging 10-year first mortgage loans on each of the properties (excluding Champions Village) that could total nearly $98M and will be non-recourse with a fixed interest rate of 3.45%.
