Bay Area Buyers Nab Strip Center

GILBERT, AZ-The Denning Family Trust from the San Francisco Bay area has paid $2.4 million for the 15,000-sf Cooper Marketplace in this Phoenix suburb. The center, built in 1999, is at the southeast corner of Cooper and Warner roads.

The seller was the CM Preschool LLC. Dan Grooters, a broker with the Denver office of Marcus & Millichap, handled the transaction.

“I had sold the buyer a retail center in Colorado Springs a couple of years ago, and he was looking for another investment in Colorado, but I couldn’t find him anything. So I went to Arizona,” Grooters tells GlobeSt.com. “He was looking for a newer, clean, well-situated strip shopping center and we found it in Phoenix.”

He says the center is anchored by a Papa John’s Pizza parlor, a Hi-Health Super Mart, a water and ice store — “those are big in Arizona,” Grooters reports — and a nail salon.

“It was 92% leased at the time of the sale,” Grooters says. “He bought it at 9.5% cap, so he’s not getting any great return. But he wanted a good, stable investment.