Another real estate company is going big on grocery-anchored retail.
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Baltimore-based MCB Real Estate has added 2.2M SF of shopping centers to its 20M SF portfolio after acquiring Epic Real Estate Partners, a private investor specializing in grocery-anchored retail real estate, MCB announced Wednesday.
MCB added $575M to its $4B of assets under management with the deal, which includes 20M SF of multifamily, industrial, office, healthcare and retail that it owns or manages and another 6M SF in it is development pipeline throughout the U.S.
The firm has been expanding over the past year, executing acquisitions and taking on management responsibilities for roughly $1B of commercial real estate assets across the U.S., it said in the release.
Its acquisition of Austin-based Epic adds 15 properties in 10 states, including Texas, North Carolina, Florida and Louisiana.
The Epic properties that are now part of MCB’s portfolio include the 290K SF Marketplace Shopping Center in Temple, Texas, the 169K SF Alafaya Square center in Oviedo, Florida, and the 110K SF Ventana Village in Tucson, Arizona.
The acquisition also comes three months after Epic and MCB joined forces in October to purchase the 440K SF Northwoods Shopping Center in San Antonio as part of a joint venture with Centerbridge Partners.
Epic’s portfolio of grocery-anchored shopping centers provides a strategic foothold in new submarkets, adding new long-term growth opportunities, MCB co-founder and Managing Partner P. David Bramble said in a statement.
“This acquisition continues our disciplined strategy to secure assets which provide diversification and exposure to unique and high-performing retail markets,” he said.
Epic’s 13 staff members will continue to operate its portfolio, which is 92% leased, from its bases in Austin and Dallas.
“By leveraging this combined expertise and network across the grocery-anchored sector, we can accomplish even more together,” Epic Chief Investment Officer Nick Tortorice said in a statement.
Grocery-anchored retail has proven one of the most resilient asset classes, with major investors making strategic plays in the space in recent months.
Demand for the asset class is fueled by consistent consumer demand and stabilizing interest rates, even amid economic volatility, a June analysis from Trepp found.
Last month, Bain Capital and 11North announced that their joint venture retail operating partnership targeting grocery-anchored retail had raised $1.6B in funding, acquiring more than a dozen assets through the platform prior to the announcement.
Also in December, a joint venture between DivcoWest, MW Group and funds associated with Blackstone announced plans to buy Hawaii’s largest grocery-anchored retail chain, Alexander & Baldwin.
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