The most expensive purchase by the Oak Brook, IL-based REIT was Birmingham, AL-based River Ridge Shopping Center, a one-year-old, 162,062-sf, 100%-leased property sold by locally based Ridge Retail Co. LLC for $29.64 million or $182.89 per sf.

River Ridge anchors are Best Buy, 45,504 sf; Linens 'N Things, 35,000 sf; Staples, 23,942 sf; and Cost Plus, 17,790 sf. A Super Target store was not part of the transaction. Jason Lazarus, Inland Real Estate Acquisitions Inc. and outside attorneys Charles Benvenuto and Andrew Viola negotiated for Inland. Jeffrey Bayer, Bayer Properties, represented the seller.

"The properties we've purchased over the past 12 months on behalf of Inland Retail are comparable to the numbers you are seeing in the biggest mergers and acquisitions," Joe Cosenza, chairman, Inland Acquisitions Inc., says in a prepared statement. "The difference is that we buy only the properties we choose. In other words, we don't get stuck with properties we might not otherwise want to buy."