Kimco Realty Corp. announced last week that it has completed the purchase of 17 shopping centers in the Boston metropolitan area for $270 million.
The shopping centers are 96 percent occupied and comprise 1.4-million square feet, the New Hyde Park-based company said. Several of the centers have more than 200,000 local residents within a three-mile radius, including those located near Boston College, Boston University, Harvard and MIT.
The portfolio also includes four other Massachusetts shopping centers, three of which are near Cape Cod, two grocery-anchored centers in northern New Jersey near New York City, and one shopping center anchored by Wal-Mart in Danbury, Conn.
“We didn’t have a large scale there. This portfolio helped us gain some critical mass in that market,” said Kimco spokesman David Bujnicki.
In additional information the company released about the acquisition, Kimco said the tenant mix in the newly acquired portfolio is aligned with Kimco’s focus on grocery, necessity-based and discount retailers.
The centers are anchored by investment-grade chains such as Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Lowe’s, CVS and Walgreens, with anchor tenants comprising 81 percent of the portfolio’s base rent. The average population within a three-mile radius of these assets is over 25 percent higher than that of Kimco’s collective retail portfolio, leading to strong sales volumes.
The purchase includes the assumption of $120.5 million of mortgage debt.
The company said the purchase is part of the company’s strategy to transform its portfolio through the acquisition of high-quality centers in key territories with strong demographics and growth potential, and to create value through select asset redevelopment and repositioning.
Earlier last month, Kimco announced it had acquired five shopping centers during the first quarter totaling more than 900,000 square feet for $216 million, including $113 million of mortgage debt.
Those acquisitions included Crossroads Plaza, a 489,000-square-foot shopping center in Cary, N.C. for $91 million with anchor tenants including Marshalls, Best Buy and Old Navy, and Quail Corners, a 110,000-foot shopping center in Charlotte, N.C. for $31.8 million anchored by a Harris Teeter grocer.
“North Carolina is one of our target markets. This gave us an opportunity to buy two nice properties,” Bujnicki said.
He said Cary is an affluent suburb of Charlotte, which is an area where Kimco is seeking to develop properties, along with the Raleigh, N.C. area. Kimco currently has nine shopping centers in the Raleigh area.
As part of a previously announced simplification strategy of reducing joint ventures, Kimco also acquired the remaining 89 percent of equity interest in three grocery-anchored shopping centers in the greater Baltimore area for $93.2 million.
During the first quarter, Kimco reported that it also sold ownership interests in 11 U.S. properties for a total of $63.7 million, including $14 million in mortgage debt. The company said the properties were located in areas with demographics below Kimco’s portfolio averages, including average population of 66,000 and a mean household income of $71,000 within a three-mile radius.
The company said it is currently negotiating contracts to sell 33 other properties for approximately $300 million and actively marketing 25 properties for approximately $290 million.
Kimco also completed the previously announced sale of a nine-property retail portfolio in Mexico to a joint venture between Macquarie Mexican REIT and Grupo Frisa for $222 million.
Kimco describes itself as North America’s largest publicly traded owner and operator of neighborhood and community shopping centers.
