"It wasn't really on the market," Sam G. Kartalis, president and COO of Dallas-based Henry S. Miller Commercial, tells GlobeSt.com about Crystal Creek I at 4637 Hedgecoxe Rd. Start to finish, though, the deal took nearly six months to bed down because the permanent loan with Chicago-based LaSalle Bank was reassigned from the private investor in Miami to TPH Capital, according to Kartalis, who co-brokered the deal with Greg S. Trout, Henry S. Miller's president of the office and industrial division. Christiane Jones of Re/Max Performance Group of Prosper, TX represented the buyer, whose 1031 exchange details weren't readily available.

Kartalis says the seller backed the center's development two years ago to "test the retail market" in the northern suburbs and secure a cash-flowing property. "That really was the only piece I felt, at the time, that lent itself to a strip center," he adds. The nine-tenant roster includes a gift shop, dry cleaners, dentist and pizza shop. TPH Capital will lease and manage the asset, which was tagged at $3.6 million for its a low-key marketing run.

Crystal Creek I sits on 1.44 acres at the junction of Hedgecoxe Road and Ohio Drive, a built-out corner with multifamily and single-family development on two corners and a church on the third. "In a town where every corner is retail, it's nice to find an intersection where only one corner is commercial retail," Kartalis says. "In a sense in that neighborhood, the center has no competition."