"He will be focused on finding new development opportunities for us, among other activities," president Katherine Roberson tells GlobeSt.com. Right now the company is pursuing a number of possibilities, including a couple of land parcels in the DC area, she says. These would be mid-sized retail projects if the deals are consummated.
At the same time, the company is currently in talks with an institutional investor to launch a $200-million private equity fund that would invest in core retail assets in the Greater Washington metro area and California. This $200-million pool of capital--in levered dollars--would be Combined Properties' second fund; it is close to completing its investment from its first fund that it launched with Blackrock.
This particular partner, though, would be investing through an open-ended fund, Roberson says. "We are hoping it will be an ongoing relationship."
The fund would follow the company's specialized investment strategy of targeting "tweener" assets. By that Roberson means assets that are too big for small companies to digest and too small for the larger players to bother with. Currently, it owns 3.5 million sf of retail strip centers in the DC area, a portfolio that ranks the firm as one of the largest private owners here.
Combined Properties is likely to start with acquisitions as it moves beyond its Washington stronghold--the third leg of its strategic build-out on the East Coast. Then, development would follow. "Ultimately we would like to pick one or two markets on the East Coast to focus on," she says. The next likely major city it will look at, she says, is Miami.
Right now the company is concentrating on pure retail--both in terms of acquisitions and development--as it pushes along the eastern seaboard. Eventually Roberson says, the company will also look at mixed-use opportunities.
A year from now, she says, she hopes to have completed at least three or four new acquisitions with its new institutional partner and have a $100-million development pipeline for the East Coast.
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Erika Morphy
Erika Morphy has been writing about commercial real estate at GlobeSt.com for more than ten years, covering the capital markets, the Mid-Atlantic region and national topics. She's a nerd so favorite examples of the former include accounting standards, Basel III and what Congress is brewing.
