Whelan Pays Kimco $21M for Suburban Chicago Shopping Center

A shopping center in the western suburbs could be poised for revitalization.

An affiliate of Robert Whelan’s development firm PMAT, which focuses on acquiring grocery-anchored shopping centers and adding value through redevelopment, paid $20.5 million to buy the 274,000-square-foot Wind Point Shopping Center at 251 North Randall Road in Batavia from Conor Flynn’s Kimco Realty, according to Kane County public records.

The shopping center covers a 32-acre lot and was built in 1998, according to an online listing. Tenants include grocery chain Aldi, Kohl’s OfficeMax and Pier 1 Imports. Kimco has owned it since 2002, when the company took out a $23 million mortgage against the property, records show. Then the firm refinanced the asset in 2012 with a $19.4 million mortgage with Equitrust Life Insurance Company serving as the lender.

Real estate investors have bet heavily on grocery-anchored retail in the Chicago suburbs as the pandemic upped the value of shopping centers that provide what is referred to as daily needs merchandise, dropping more than $250 million into such businesses in the area over the past several months. Connecticut-based AmCap paid $18.7 million for a Wauconda shopping center in October, and Tampa’s East Coast Acquisitions paid $30.5 million for a River Grove property in August. Trades of grocery-anchored assets hit a record high in 2021, according to JLL.

Still, some shopping corridors and suburban malls have seen sharp declines in lease and occupancy rates. The seller of a Tinley Park shopping center, for instance, recently took a $1 million loss.

The Louisiana-based buyer’s other Chicago-area properties include the 265,000-square-foot Downers Park Plaza in Downers Grove, the 128,000-square-foot South Elgin Commons in South Elgin, the 132,000-square foot Machesney Gateway in Machesney Park. The group owns properties in the Southeast, Sun Belt, Midwest and Mid-Atlantic.

Kimco, based in Jericho, New York, still owns three Chicago-area retail centers, according to the firm’s website: the 193,000-square-foot Hawthorn Hills Square in Vernon Hills, the 142,000-square foot Plaza Del Prado in Glenview and the 63,000-square-foot Skokie Pointe in Skokie. Neither Kimco nor PMAT returned requests for comment.

Last month, Kimco spent $376 million to buy a Long Island grocery-anchored retail portfolio consisting of seven grocery-anchored shopping centers and one freestanding grocery store totaling 540,000 square feet in a deal with Kabro Associates.