Bain Capital and 11North are expanding their open-air shopping center portfolio, joining a wave of private capital targeting neighborhood retail plazas.
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Bain Capital Real Estate and real estate investment firm 11North raised $1.6B for their joint venture targeting high-quality and value-add grocery-anchored retail. Additional funding from Bain Capital Real Estate Fund III takes the total available investable equity above $2B, the companies announced Tuesday.
The capital raise was led by two unnamed “global institutional investors,” along with new and existing Bain clients, according to a release. It will target investments in the U.S. and Canada.
“We see open-air retail continuing to benefit from durable secular trends, including the growth of omnichannel shopping, healthy sales performance in essential categories, and evolving consumer patterns that keep daily needs closer to where people live,” Martha Kelley, a managing director at Bain Capital Real Estate, said in a statement.
Boston-based Bain and 11North launched the joint venture, 11North Partners, in April 2024. The partnership includes an operating platform led by Brian Harper, the former CEO of RPT Realty who oversaw its $2B sale to Kimco Realty last January and went on to helm New York-based 11North after its founding early last year.
Bain and 11North have already acquired more than a dozen assets through the platform. They acquired a $395M portfolio in August of 10 Publix-anchored retail centers in infill markets across Florida and Charleston, South Carolina, and paid $212M in June for three retail properties around Oklahoma City anchored by Whole Foods and Trader Joe's.
“From the beginning of 11North Partners, our shared vision with Bain Capital was to build a platform that could thoughtfully invest across both core plus and value add opportunities,” Harper said in a statement. “This first capital raise delivers on that vision and positions us to scale with discipline.”
Grocery-anchored retail is attracting outsized investment in 2025 from private funds looking for necessity-based retail.
Blackstone made a takeover bid earlier this month for REIT Alexander & Baldwin, the largest owner of grocery-anchored shopping centers in Hawaii, at a $2.3B valuation. In February, a Blackstone fund paid $4B for Retail Opportunity Investments Corp., another open-air retail REIT.
Nuveen Real Estate said in May that it raised $320M to target grocery-anchored investments. Walmart, the country’s largest grocery seller, has also been buying up retail centers this year as it looks to gain control of more of its real estate.
CORRECTION, DEC. 16, 1:10 P.M. ET: A previous version of this story mischaracterized the partnership between Bain Capital and 11North, which is a dedicated retail operating platform.
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