LITTLE ROCK, AR-Phillips Edison & Co., a 16-year-old, Baltimore-based redeveloper of neighborhood and community centers, has acquired its 23rd retail asset this year with the purchase of the 147,112-sf Geyer Springs Shopping Center. Since January, the company has acquired 3.18 million sf in various national markets.

The price of the Geyer Springs property wasn't disclosed, but a company representative tells GlobeSt.com it was "below $100 per sf." That would place it in the total price range of about $10 million, retail brokers in Atlanta familiar with the company's growing national portfolio, tell GlobeSt.com.

The Geyer Springs shopping center acquisition "presents Phillips Edison with an opportunity to focus our leasing efforts in upgrading and stabilizing a grocery-anchored shopping center located at a strong retail corner" in Little Rock, says Mark Addy, the company's COO.

John Bessey, vice president of acquisitions in the Cincinnati office of Phillips Edison, says it has invested about $179 million this year and plans to grow that total to about $300 million by yearend. "We've got $800 million to play with so we're hoping to continue" the growth pattern, he says. "We've been busy."

The $800-million is coming from Phillips Edison Shopping Center Fund III, which GlobeSt.com previously reported. The company anticipates spending most of the $800 million over a three-year acquisition period.

Bessey says the company now owns and manages 123 neighborhood and community shopping centers totaling 14 million sf. Phillips Edison's largest portfolio purchase was completed in January with the $47-million acquisition of seven properties from Ramco-Gershenson Properties Trust of Farmington Hills, MI. The properties' total 946,729 sf equated to an average of per-sf price of $49.64.