Small Retail Projects Filling Up

PORTLAND-If you’re a national retailer not in direct competition, life is good next to Wal-Mart. As a result, two small retail developments rising adjacent to Wal-Mart stores in Clackamas and Wood Village are having no trouble finding tenants.Trammell Crow Co. is overseeing the projects for their respective owners. TCC senior vice president Jim Parsons tells GlobeSt.com that both projects are filling up with multi-location national tenants that look specifically to locate at Wal-Mart- and Target-anchored centers.One of the projects is Wood Village Shops, a $3-million, 10,400-sf development at the confluence of Northeast Sandy Boulevard, Interstate 84 and 238th Northeast. It is 72% leased with a triple-net asking rate of around $25 per sf per year and has been under construction for one month. Tenants include Payless ShoeSource, EB Games, Quizno’s Subs and Allied Cash, and there is activity on the remaining two spaces, says Parsons.The development, by Atlas Wood Village, is on a piece of 30 acres that was master planned in 1998. Trammell Crow purchased the land at that time and simultaneously sold off 19 acres to Wal-Mart. Another acre was sold to Jack-in-the-Box, and a five-acre parcel was sold to Olinger Travel who moved their east side headquarters facility from Clackamas.  The remaining one-acre parcel is the Wood Village Shops project, for which the land sale closed July 29. The shops are being constructed by Joseph Hughes and financed by Bank of America.Parsons says the Wood Village Wal-Mart attracts some 20,000 shoppers a week, which is why the smaller national retailers want to be in close proximity. Another 15,000 shoppers a week are patronizing the new Wal-Mart location in the former Home Depot space on Southeast 82nd Avenue, where Trammell Crow is developing a similarly-sized retail center on behalf of Kite Development. Tenants filling that project include Washington Mutual Bank, Quizno’s and Cold Stone Creamery. Parsons says leases and in negotiation or offers have been made on the remaining space. “Many of these tenants look for Wal-Mart and Target-anchored centers,” says Parsons. “It puts us in a very strong position.”