"This had been a dormant area for some time, but with all the rooftops going out there, it's gotten pretty exciting," Sanford Burstyn, with Marcus & Millichap's Phoenix office tells GlobeSt.com. The 46,008-sf shopping plaza, located at 1450 N. Dysart Rd., serves as shadow space to a Food City supermarket, which was not included in the deal. The fully leased center is home to tenants that include Payless Shoes, Walgreens, Goodwill, a dance academy, a 99 Cent store, American Family Insurance and Subway.

Burstyn said he learned the property was available in "a cold call" to seller Old Pueblo Centers LP of Mission Hills, KS, which was divesting of the property to pursue other investment projects. Burstyn found a match for the shopping center in buyer L&G Dysart Road, which owns other properties in the Phoenix market. One of those properties, Big Lots Plaza at Central and Baseline in Phoenix currently is on the market for $4.5 million, he said.

The shopping plaza is one of only a handful of retail outlets in the North Dysart Road area of Avondale and had a strong 12% cap rate, which made the investment appealing, Burstyn said. He represented the buyer and Swain Chapman, with Chapman-Lindsey Commercial Real Estate in Phoenix, represented the seller in the transaction.