ShopOne, Pantheon Acquire 2 Suburban Philly Strip Centers
A pair of shopping centers in Bucks County have been snatched up as investor demand in the supply-constrained strip mall sector remains high in greater Philly.
A joint venture between ShopOne Centers REIT, Pantheon and an unnamed institutional investor acquired the Village Center in Bensalem and Goodnoe’s Corner in Newtown, ShopOne announced in a press release Monday.
The release didn't disclose the sale price or name of the seller. ShopOne and Pantheon didn't respond to Bisnow’s requests for comment.
The nearly 88K SF Bensalem shopping center in the shadow of Interstate 276 is anchored by grocery chain ACME. It also has a Wells Fargo and several restaurants.
Goodnoe’s Corner is fully leased, according to the release. The nearly 35K SF strip center anchored by a Rite Aid also has an AT&T store and a Firstrust Bank.
The deals bring the number of shopping centers in the joint venture's portfolio to 20. The portfolio encompasses more than 2M SF.
“These acquisitions align with our strategy of investing in well-located, grocery-anchored and convenience-oriented centers that serve as essential retail destinations within their communities,” ShopOne CEO Chris Reed said in a statement.
The pandemic was bad for brick-and-mortar retail at large but good for strip centers, which often cater to neighborhood shoppers making quick daily trips. Traffic at strip malls in 2023 was up 18% from prepandemic levels, according to data from RetailStat.
While neighborhood strip centers are in high demand, lofty construction costs have made building new ones financially unfeasible in most parts of the U.S. in recent years.
Amid that backdrop, many sizable grocery-anchored strip centers have been changing hands across the Philadelphia suburbs.
The nearly 110K SF Bensalem Shopping Center, down the road from Village Center, sold for $20.5M earlier this month, which comes out to $188 per SF, the Philadelphia Business Journal reported. In South Jersey, a 230K SF Acme-anchored shopping center in Voorhees sold for $41.7M in December — $12M more than it went for just two years earlier.
