Cohen & Steers Income Opportunities REIT Inc. and Phillips Edison & Co. have purchased Oak Grove Shoppes, a 142,000-square-foot, grocery-anchored shopping center in Orlando, Fla.
This marks the second acquisition for the $300 million joined venture focused on acquiring open-air, grocery-anchored shopping centers. The REIT holds an 80 percent stake, while PECO owns the remaining 20 percent in the partnership.
Kitson & Partners previously owned the asset, according to CommercialEdge data. The company had acquired Oak Grove Shoppes for $9 million back in 2019.
Built in 1983 and redeveloped in 2023, Oak Grove Shoppes encompasses 11 buildings on some 20 acres. Ameris Bank provided a $27.2 million construction loan for the redevelopment of the open-air shopping center, the same source shows.
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Anchored by Marshalls and a 48,000-square-foot Publix store, Oak Grove Shoppes also features a diverse mix of regional and national tenants such as Subway, BurgerFi, Metro Diner and O2B Kids, among others. At the time of the sale, the retail center was 91 percent leased.
Located at 995 N. State Road 434, the shopping center is within Orlando’s Altamonte Springs submarket. The property is near Interstate 4, which provides access to downtown Orlando.
At the end of last year, the Cohen & Steers REIT owned four grocery-anchored and community shopping centers across the U.S. One of the properties is Marketplace at Highland Village, an approximately 451,000-square-foot open-air retail asset in Dallas that the investment trust acquired through a joint venture with Sterling Organization.
Orlando’s thriving retail market
Orlando’s retail market has been thriving due to its rapidly growing population and robust economy. Last year, the transaction volume amounted to nearly $1.1 billion, a 14.7 percent increase from the previous year, according to a recent Cushman & Wakefield report.
Meanwhile, more than 855,000 square feet of new retail space was delivered throughout 2024, with an additional 1 million square feet under construction by the end of the fourth quarter.
Demand remained strong, with leases totaling 492,000 square feet in the last quarter alone. The average asking rate for retail space in the metro rose to $29.89 per square foot by the end of the fourth quarter, reflecting a 4.4 percent year-over-year increase.