Brixmor Property Group and a pair of investors are teaming up to buy Slate Grocery REIT and its 115 shopping centers for more than $2.3B.

New York-based Brixmor Property Group will pay $636M to acquire 23 grocery-anchored shopping centers outright from Slate, while also partnering with Everview Partners and a fund associated with the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority to acquire 92 similar assets for $1.7B. 

The combined $2.3B transaction will conclude a strategic review for Slate, whose shares plummeted 20% on the Toronto Stock Exchange last week after the REIT announced it was suspending distributions as it plotted the path forward.

The Brixmor venture agreed to pay $13 per share in an all-cash transaction to take Slate private, 13% more than its value in May and 20% more than its value after distributions were suspended. Slate shareholders still need to approve the deal, which is expected to close in the first quarter of 2027. 

New York-based Brixmor will acquire a 20% equity interest in the larger property portfolio while acting as the property manager and leasing agent. It also pledged a $174M equity investment in the joint venture.

“This outcome validates what we have long believed: grocery-anchored essential real estate is a high-quality, in-demand asset class, and active in-house management creates measurable value for investors,” Slate CEO Brian Welch said in a statement. 

The deal gives Brixmor access to properties with in-place rents below its portfolio average and $100M in redevelopment and outparcel development opportunities, the grocery-anchored REIT said. The portfolio is projected to generate net operating income of 4% in the long term.

“Across both the wholly owned and joint venture assets, we see meaningful embedded value through below-market rents and a robust pipeline of remerchandising, redevelopment, and outparcel opportunities,” Brixmor CEO Brian Finnegan said in a statement. 

The 23-property portfolio spans 3.2M SF and includes one property that Brixmor will only have a 50% interest in. Eleven of the properties are in Florida, seven in North Carolina, three in Georgia and one each in Michigan and Massachusetts.

Shares in Brixmor were trading flat Monday morning and are up roughly 8% this year. Everview Partners, which along with ADIA is partnering in the larger transaction, is a New York-based investor focused on private equity, credit and real estate.

Grocery-anchored retail has become a popular investment target, in part because buyers are looking for resilient assets that are likely to perform regardless of macroeconomic conditions and because retail construction is historically low.

GCM Grosvenor provided $200M in seed funding to sector veteran Jon Mendis’ Hyperion Grocery Retail Partners III fund that is aiming to grow into a $1B portfolio.

Norges Bank Investment Management, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, invested $500M with Asana Partners in July to buy high-quality retail assets and launched the venture with a grocery-anchored asset purchase. A month earlier, Norges and a group of other investment giants agreed to acquire Echo Realty and its 230 retail centers in a deal with a $2B portfolio valuation.