One of the country’s oldest real estate investment trusts has traded two properties as part of an ongoing effort to reposition and refine its portfolio.
North Bethesda, Md.-based Federal Realty Investment Trust sold the multifamily complex formerly known as Pallas at Pike & Rose in its North Bethesda backyard and the Bristol Plaza retail center in Bristol, Conn., for a combined $170 million. A fund controlled by Florida-based Sterling Organization purchased Bristol Plaza for $44 million, per Sterling, while Bell Partners purchased the Pallas at Pike & Rose complex for about $126 million, Commercial Observer has learned.
“These transactions demonstrate the strength and flexibility of our platform,” Don Wood, Federal Realty president and CEO, said in a statement. “In mixed-use environments, our ability to unlock embedded value in our stabilized, peripheral residential components gives us an unrivaled cost-of-capital advantage to self-fund growth when and where it matters most. At the same time, we’re recycling capital from mature, long-held retail assets into investments that offer the greatest opportunity to apply Federal Realty’s core operating and redevelopment capabilities and drive long-term growth.”
The Pallas at Pike & Rose property is a 315-unit apartment complex at 11550 Old Georgetown Road, developed by Federal Realty in 2015. The building is part of Federal Realty’s Pike & Rose mixed-use district in North Bethesda, a 24-acre campus currently featuring some 800 units (with plans for about 1,500 total), a 177-key hotel and hundreds of thousands of square feet of retail and office space. Bell Partners has redubbed the property as Bell at the Pike, though a spokesperson for the firm did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Bristol Plaza, at 641 Farmington Avenue, is a 263,000-square-foot, grocery-anchored shopping center featuring tenants such as Stop & Shop, T.J. Maxx, Burlington and Five Below. Roughly 4 acres at the complex is primed for redevelopment, per Sterling, and about 25,000 square feet of retail space is currently available for lease.
“Bristol Plaza represents an opportunity to acquire a high-performing, grocery-anchored retail center with immediate value-add potential,” Jordan Fried, Sterling principal, said in a statement.
Federal Realty’s latest trades round out a year of notable dispositions for the 1962-founded REIT as it realigns its portfolio. In May, it sold the 108-unit Levare at Santana Row in San Jose, Calif., to an affiliate of Hines for $74 million. The following month, it sold a 181,000-square-foot retail portfolio on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles to Tinder founder Justin Mateen and his brother Tyler Mateen for $69 million.
The REIT has made some significant purchases throughout the year as well. In October, it spent $187 million for the retail component of PGIM Real Estate’s Annapolis Town Center, a 2 million-square-foot mixed-use district in Annapolis, Md.
Nick Trombola can be reached at ntrombola@commercialobserver.com.
