CLEVELAND—Health-oriented grocery stores have become all the rage in many parts of the US, and securing one as a tenant can help keep older properties up-to-date and packed with customers. That was Daren W. Hornig's idea when he recently helped sign Fresh Thyme Farmers Market to anchor Golden Gate Shopping Center in east suburban Mayfield Heights.

As reported in GlobeSt.com, his New York-based Hornig Capital Partners, which along with Hutensky Capital Partners and B&D Holdings, bought the property, a retail mainstay in the submarket for decades, for $47 million in 2014. It one of the biggest retail deals in the metro region that year.

"By and large, Golden Gate was a soft goods oriented shopping center that had done real well for 50 years," Hornig tells GlobeSt.com. And although the center was about 95% occupied when the partners bought it, he felt that to truly achieve its potential, the property needed a grocery store.

Clothing stores do not attract weekly visits, he explains, whereas a grocery store can bring in the same customer two and even three times a week, boosting the amount of overall traffic, increasing the potential rental income and "enhancing the long-term value of the center."

But a center that was already near full occupancy needed a special boost, and for landlords in the Midwest, that increasingly means signing a deal with Fresh Thyme, a new grocery that specializes in fresh, health-oriented foods. In the past two years, the brand has opened outlets across the region and helped fulfill the growing consumer demand for these products.

"The stores that they have opened throughout the region are doing very well," Hornig says. Furthermore, this particular submarket is lacking this kind of store. He is also comforted by the fact that Fresh Thyme is backed by Grand Rapids, MI-based Meijer, a multi-billion dollar corporation.

Golden Gate had hosted the first Office Max in the country, "literally store #1," Hornig says. "When we bought it we realized there would have to be some turnover in the tenants." In addition to Fresh Thyme, a number of other tenants have taken space at the center in the past year, including Tuxedo Junction and LaBarberia, along with Cuyahoga County's Auto Title, which will return to Golden Gate in January. The company has kept the occupancy rate at about 95%, but "now that we have Fresh Thyme in there," has greatly boosted the value.