Two Houston investors are quickly expanding their retail empire, this time in Dallas.
Jivar Foty and Johnny Ganim purchased Square 67, a 183,000-square-foot shopping center at 2550 Red Bird Lane, as part of a 1031 exchange, according to a release from Marcus & Millichap, which arranged the sale. Foty is a principal with Rise Group Investments; Ganim is with Regional Properties Texas.
Marcus & Millichap’s Chris Gaine and Philip Levy had the listing.
Deed records show Charles Lucenay is the seller. He’s the Houston-based owner of Cornerstone Commercial Properties. Foty and Ganim bought the property with an $11.7 million mortgage from Bank of Houston.
Square 67 sits on 17 acres and is 99 percent occupied, the release said. It is home to Fitness Connection and Family Dollar. The 25-suite retail strip is 2 miles from the Shops at Redbird, a landmark shopping mall in southern Dallas that’s undergoing redevelopment. Developer Peter Brodsky purchased Red Bird in 2015. The mall is now home to apartments, a Dallas College workforce center, a day care, a Parkland Health Clinic and an outpost of UT Southwestern medical center.
The purchase comes a few months after Foty and Ganim purchased a similar property in Houston. Over the summer , they bought Woodforest Shopping Center, at 10907-11095 East Freeway, the Houston Business Journal reported. The 197,000-square-foot retail center was last valued at $11.9 million and was 96 percent occupied at time of the trade.
Retail has proven to be a wise real estate investment after warnings about the death knell of retail after the Great Financial Crisis kept developers from building new products. As a result, space is limited and rents are high.
In Dallas-Fort Worth, retail rents are up from a year ago, increasing from $19.78 to $20.28 per square foot, according to Partners Real Estate. Vacancy rates are stable at 4.8 percent.
The market’s stability means it’s able to weather the closure of big-box retailers, like Party City. The space has been gobbled up by experiential users like gyms and even bookseller Barnes & Noble, which is having a renaissance.
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