Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Noble Town Center in Jenkintown sells for $31.5M



DDR Corp. bought the Noble Town Center in Jenkintown, Pa., for $31.5 million.

The Beachwood, Ohio, real estate company said in a statement that the transaction was part of eight deals worth $699 million it completed in the third quarter.

The 168,000-square-foot retail property is at 901 Old York Road and was 84 percent occupied at the time of the sale. A space where an Old Navy once operated is vacant but DDR said it is “in advanced discussions with a national junior anchor to fill the one remaining vacancy in the center.”

PetSmart and Bed Bath & Beyond are current tenants.

Brad Nathanson of CBRE Inc. arranged the transaction. AEW Capital Management of Boston was the seller.

In its former life, Noble Town Center was a John Wanamaker department store that served the affluent Jenkintown area. The Wanamaker's was representative of the store pushing into the suburbs after spending decades as a Center City institution.

The department store was shuttered in 1996 and stood vacant until 1998 when Lubert-Adler bought it with an eye toward repositioning it. In fact, it was the Philadelphia real estate investment fund’s first acquisition under what was then a new strategy to buy excess real estate from distressed retailers. Lubert-Adler bought the property that sits on 18.5 acres from the May Department Stores Inc.

May bought Woodward & Lathrop, which had acquired Philadelphia-rooted Wanamaker's.

Lubert-Adler converted the three-story building into a multi-tenanted retail center. At the time, the company was able to lease it to six tenants.

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