DRA fetches $31M as Philips Edison, Sperry pounce on Chicagoland retail selloff

A new batch of investors peeled off pieces of DRA Advisors’ Chicagoland retail portfolio as the firm’s selloff ballooned by more than $31 million in recent days.

Ohio-based REIT Philips Edison, which trades on the NASDAQ exchange under the ticker symbol PECO, got in on the action this week with a $23 million purchase of a grocery-anchored shopping center at 885 East Belvidere Road in Grayslake, a northern suburb.

New York-based DRA — which is shedding a large Midwest property portfolio said to be worth $540 million — sold the 105,000-square-foot shopping center occupied mostly by grocer Jewel-Osco to Phillips, Lake County records show.

Neither Philips nor DRA returned requests for comment.

It’s far from the only deal DRA has made in recent days as it accelerates its flight from Chicago-area retail assets. The company acquired Inland Real Estate in 2016 and its presumed $2.3 billion portfolio that included 132 properties totalling over 15 million square feet. DRA has since sold most of the portfolio. It announced its intent to liquidate the retail properties, many of which include grocery-anchored shopping centers, earlier this year.

Also this month, DRA sold an Aurora shopping center for $9 million to Sperry Equities, Co-Star News reported. That is in addition to a trio of deals between DRA and a buyer called First-Tek Incorporated.

First-Tek snapped up three shopping centers in Chicago suburbs Darien, Frankfurt and Schaumburg from DRA. Rick Drogosz, Ben Wineman, and Joe Girardi with brokerage Mid-America Real Estate represented DRA in those three sales. The broker declined to comment on the pricing, which hasn’t yet been publicly documented.

The properties range from 50,000 square feet to 170,000 square feet and include tenants such as Benjamin Moore, Play it Again Sports, Jo-Ann Fabric, Chipotle and Panera, in addition to Jewel-Osco.

Elsewhere in the northern suburbs, DRA and Iowa-based Principal Life Insurance last month pulled off $41 million in deals, as both firms have been unloading Chicago-area properties in recent months. New York-based Nassimi Realty paid DRA nearly $24 million for the Four Flaggs shopping center in Niles, while Principal fetched $17 million from Atlanta-based RCG Ventures for the Grand Hunt Shopping Center in Gurnee.