These might be tough times for some retailers, but investors are still on the hunt for solid retail properties, even smaller ones.

“Investors from across the country are actively pursuing secondary and even tertiary markets along the Colorado Front Range to bolster their real estate portfolios,” CBRE Capital Markets, Retail Partners Senior Vice President Matthew Henrichs said.

Recently Henrichs and colleagues Parker Brown and Brad Lyons, all in the company's Denver office, facilitated the sale of just such a small retail property, an 8K SF strip center at 532-536 Garden of the Gods Road in Colorado Springs for $3.4M.

“For a relatively small footprint, the Shops at Garden of the Gods had a lot going for it, including its high-profile corner location, renovations and the security of long-term cash flow from three internet-resistant, credit-lease tenants,” Hendrichs said.

The Shops at Garden of the Gods was built in 1977, but completely remodeled beginning last year. Upon completion of the renovations early in 2017, the retailers took up residency: Qdoba Mexican Eats, FedEx Office and Cricket Wireless, each signing a long-term lease and bringing the property to 100% occupancy.

Henrichs and his colleagues represented the seller, Republic Investment Group of Denver, and sourced the buyer, a high net worth investor from California. The deal was the investor's first retail property acquisition in Colorado.

“Given the scarcity of small-format retail offerings in Denver proper, the investor who purchased this property looked to a high-quality infill location in Colorado Springs as an avenue to entering the Colorado investment market,” Henrichs said.