With construction well under way and delivery scheduled for this summer, the developer's brokerage firm SDA, which also served as representation in the land acquisition and the lease deal with Rite Aid, is bringing the property to market with a $15.9 million price tag. “The closest drugstore is a Walgreens less than a mile away, but it has a very different traffic flow and a very different market. This store is going to serve the northwest quadrant, where it transitions into Burbank as you go further west,” Ara Rostamian, VP in SDA's retail investment group, tells GlobeSt.com. Ara Rostamian represented the developers in the land acquisition, while Ielen Sarkisian, EVP at SDA, facilitated the build-to-suit agreement with Rite Aid.

GLENDALE, CA—Starpoint Commercial Properties and HRI Development are building a rare freestanding triple-net drug stores in the San Fernando Valley market in a joint venture project. The developer purchased a former Marie Callender's restaurant on nearly an acre of land that had sat vacant for several years, to develop a build-to-suit Rite Aid. The property, which will be complete this summer, has come to market, becoming the first newly constructed and freestanding triple-net drugstore to come to market since 2011.

“We are all very familiar with the Glendale market, and have been aware of this site,” Evan Farahnik, a principal at Starpoint Commercial Properties, tells GlobeSt.com. “It was a vacant Marie Callender's, and the previous owner has made several attempts to find another restaurant to occupy the space and was unable. We knew there were tenants that had interest in this large of a land parcel to do a build-to-suit before we started pursuing the acquisition. We looked at multiple tenant triple-net or single-tenant triple net. We looked at multiple facets and product mixes and decided that this was the option that made the most sense for the city and the local community.”

Located at 707 N Pacific Avenue in Glendale, the site is a rare example of a newly constructed freestanding drugstore in the high-barrier-to-entry San Fernando Valley submarket. “A lot of the land transactions that you may be able to find are in the $100 per square foot, and that is mainly because of the multifamily development. It is almost impossible for any retail concept to be able to compete with those economics,” Hamo Rostamian, a principal at HRI Development. “We actually did pay a premium for the site, but the beauty was that we were able to convince Rite Aid that there was economic value to the site that they could not recapture again. It was a very creative way to work with a user that was not aware that this could happen, and it really worked out great.

Rostamian has a prior relationship with the drugstore and knew that they would be a good fit for the location. “I had a personal relationship many years ago with Rite Aid and we knew their patterns of customer loyalty,” he adds. “They were displaced from one of their stores as a result of the Americana at Brand. It was not obvious that they needed a store, but with analysis and showing them what they could do in this location, they became very excited about it.”

With construction well under way and delivery scheduled for this summer, the developer's brokerage firm SDA, which also served as representation in the land acquisition and the lease deal with Rite Aid, is bringing the property to market with a $15.9 million price tag. “The closest drugstore is a Walgreens less than a mile away, but it has a very different traffic flow and a very different market. This store is going to serve the northwest quadrant, where it transitions into Burbank as you go further west,” Ara Rostamian, VP in SDA's retail investment group, tells GlobeSt.com. Ara Rostamian represented the developers in the land acquisition, while Ielen Sarkisian, EVP at SDA, facilitated the build-to-suit agreement with Rite Aid.