GMS Realty Adds to Local Retail Holdings

LAKE OSWEGO, OR-GMS Realty picked up its third Portland-area property late last month, paying $12.3 million for the 86,600-sf grocery-anchored Oswego Village shopping center. The seller was the Ventura County Employee Retirement Association, which held the property for 10 years.

The center is located on Highway 43 (Main Street) just south of A Street, which is a major east-west corridor through the upscale Lake Oswego community. After 18,000-sf of new and renewal activity over the final two months of the year, the property was 98% leased heading into 2003. GMS tied it up in January.The listing broker, Lou Lauman of CB Richard Ellis tells GlobeSt.com he has significant interest from every buyer type, from institutional buyers to syndicators to private investors. “It’s a very healthy market for grocery-anchored shopping centers,” says Lauman, whose investment team includes Raymond Duchek and Kevin Adatto. “And in Lake Oswego, the vacancy rate is under 4%.”

Dan Stein, one of the CB Richard Ellis brokers who leased it up at the end of 2002, said at that time that the center’s annualized triple-net asking rates — between $14 per sf and $21 per sf — had actually gone up in some cases due to multiple bidders for the same space.