Phoenix shopping center sold for $30 million

A north Phoenix shopping center once anchored by a Bashas' grocery store was sold Wednesday to a California-based investor for $30 million, making it the most expensive local retail-property sale since early 2008.

Although the Bashas' closed in 2009, a casualty of the company's bankruptcy reorganization, commercial real-estate brokers involved in the deal said Tatum Point Shopping Center remains a major draw for area shoppers because of its high-traffic location, the southwestern corner of Bell Road and Tatum Boulevard, and the presence of an adjacent Walmart store.

Ryan Schubert, a senior vice president at Cassidy Turley BRE Commercial in Phoenix, commercial realty-services firm , said the Walmart is physically located in the shopping center but stands on property owned by Walmart and is not part of the sale.

The seller of the surrounding 19-acre retail site is a limited partnership owned by Cornwell Corp., a Scottsdale-based commercial developer and property-management firm, said Schubert, a broker representing Cornwell in the deal.

The buyer is a real-estate investment venture based in Los Altos, Calif., formed under the name Tatum Venture LLC.

Cornwell decided to sell the shopping center in order to focus on its core business of managing office and industrial properties, Schubert said. Tatum Point is the only retail project listed among the 12-property portfolio on Cornwell's website.

Although there have been several large commercial real-estate deals recently in the Phoenix area involving multifamily housing, industrial and office properties, few retail properties have sold, and none with as high a purchase price as Tatum Point.

Schubert said that before Wednesday's deal, the most recent retail-property sale that met or exceeded $30 million was a north Scottsdale Whole Foods shopping center that sold in early 2008 for about $60 million.

Tatum Point includes roughly 174,000 square feet of retail space, about 30 percent of which is in the vacant former Bashas' building.

Typically, the loss of a grocery-store anchor translates to nearly certain doom for a shopping center's smaller, satellite businesses.

However, Schubert said that the Walmart, which does not sell groceries but has plans to add them soon, has attracted enough consumer traffic to keep the surrounding businesses viable.

Still, he said, the buyer's most immediate goal likely will be finding an appropriate tenant for the empty space, such as a big-box retailer.

by J. Craig Anderson The Arizona Republic Jun. 30, 2011 12:00 AM




Phoenix shopping center sold for $30 million