Blackstone Sells Grocery-Anchored Retail to Head Capital Partners

Grocery anchored retail centers continue to draw investor interest across North Texas.

Head Capital Partners has acquired the 140,000 square foot Independence Square retail center in Plano, according to a news release. The seller was not announced but tax documents show the owner to be Preferred Apartment Communities, an investment firm that was acquired a year ago by real estate titan Blackstone for $5.8 billion.

JLL brokered the deal with a team led by senior managing directors Chris Gerard and Barry Brown. The price was not revealed. The property is valued at more than $20 million by the Collin County Appraisal District.

The shopping center, located at 3100 Independence Parkway, is anchored by a Tom Thumb grocery store and is 94 percent leased. The center is adjacent to Plano High School and four elementary schools. It’s 35 minutes from downtown Dallas.

Other tenants include Oscar Nail Lounge, Cookies by Design, Great Clips, Little Greek Restaurant, Frost Bank, Jersey Mike’s and Workout Anytime. The center receives over 850,000 visits annually and caters to over 127,000 residents in a three mile radius, according to JLL.

Dallas-based Head Capital Partners is led by Scott Head, who was previously a managing partner with Trigild and worked as a broker for CBRE. Head Capital is focused on the acquisition of multi-tenant shopping centers throughout Texas and surrounding states, according to its website.

Retail occupancy in Dallas-Fort Worth held around 95 percent last year for the first time since 1990, according to Weitzman. The rest of the Texas Triangle kept pace with rates ranging between 94 to 97 percent.

Retail leasing is spread fairly evenly across DFW’s submarkets, but grocery-anchored tenants consistently generate the strongest demand because of daily foot traffic, according to Weitzman. Most new retail construction in DFW this year will occur in grocery-anchored shopping centers and smaller neighborhood services.Grocery juggernauts like H-E-B are rapidly expanding in North Texas with new stores in Plano and Frisco and plans for locations in Fort Worth and Denton.