By John Rebchook, CREJ

A local investor recently paid $4.85 million for Centennial Corner, a retail center near a Walmart Supercenter.

The investor, who did not want to be named, paid $259 per square foot for the 18,719-sf, two-building center at 10909 E. Arapahoe Road in Centennial.

“It was an off-market deal,” said Tom Ethington, who represented the seller in the transaction with Robert Edwards.

Both Ethington and Edwards are senior advisers at Pinnacle Real Estate Advisors.

Kevin Calame and Matt Lewallen, also senior advisers at Pinnacle, represented the buyer.

The buyer had sold an apartment building in the Denver area and purchased Centennial Corner in a 1031 exchange.

“I would not say this has a high cap rate (at 6.1 percent), but the delta between apartment cap rates and retail cap rates is pretty wide in today’s market,” Ethington said.

“The buyers took the opportunity of this sellers’ market in multifamily and traded into a higher cap rate retail asset with less management,” Calame said.

The center will have a stabilized cap rate estimated at 7.5 percent once two empty spaces, for a total of 2,760 sf, are leased.