RICHARDSON, Texas — Read this story and more North Texas business news from our partners at the Dallas Business Journal.
A more than 200,000-square-foot landmark shopping center in Richardson has sold for $40.5 million.
Oklahoma City-based JAH Realty LP, through its affiliate JAHCO Richardson Heights LLC, bought the Alamo Drafthouse- and TJ Maxx-anchored property at the southwest corner of Belt Line Road and U.S. 75, according to a JAH news release.
Houston-based Silver Star Properties REIT Inc. sold the shopping center as part of a broader effort to offload legacy assets as the company pivots its strategy to self-storage and single-tenant retail spaces, per a news release from Silver Star.
With the sale of Richardson Heights, Silver Star has 20 remaining legacy assets which it intends to sell "as soon as reasonably possible."
"The transition of legacy assets and acquisition of self-storage and single-tenant real estate assets is fundamental to the success of the company’s New Direction Plan," the release states.
JLL Capital Markets represented Silver Star in the sale. The JLL (NYSE: JLL) Investment Sales and Advisory team was led by Senior Managing Directors Adam Howells and Chris Gerard along with Associate Ben Esterer and Analyst Keenan Ryan.
Constructed in the early 1950s, Richardson Heights was the city of Richardson's first shopping center and has become a staple for the community for the past 70 years, according to news releases from the buyer, the seller and JLL.
The center is currently 79% leased and anchored by retail, restaurant, and service tenants including Alamo Drafthouse, Half Price Books, McDonald’s, Party City, Skechers, TJ Maxx and others. The Alamo Drafthouse closed as part of Chapter 7 bankruptcy filings by the former franchisees, but plans call for reopening the movie-dining venue after the chain was acquired by Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Located at 100 S. Central Expressway, Richardson Heights offers 175 feet of highly visible frontage on U.S. 75 and caters to 148,000-plus residents within a 3-mile radius, according to JAH. The center is surrounded by affluent neighborhoods and close to the University of Texas at Dallas, so it attracts a diverse mix of families and young professionals, per JAH's release.
Significant renovations are in the works for the 201,433-square-foot shopping center, including architectural enhancements, façade modifications, landscaping and lighting upgrades, and other improvements, Graham Irvine, managing director at JAH, said in a statement. JAH is highly familiar with the area having multiple other properties within a few miles of the intersection, and is "confident about the long-term ownership and potential of Richardson Heights," he said.
JAH plans to share elevations of the renovation plans in the coming weeks and will announce a schedule to complete the work later this year, Graham said. The firm’s focus on repositioning Richardson Heights will start with a marketing effort to attract one or more tenants for the remaining roughly 30,000 square feet of vacant space located in the middle of the shopping center, he said.
"We had been looking at Richardson Heights off and on for many years, and decided to focus our acquisition team on this asset when JLL began their marketing again earlier this year," Graham’s statement says.
With this acquisition, JAH now owns and operates a retail portfolio of about 2.8 million square feet in Dallas-Fort Worth and Oklahoma City, which it manages and leases with its in-house team.
