la Frontera In the News

Globe Street

December 19, 2002

JV Harvests $78.1M From 535,000-SF La Frontera

by Tim Green

ROUND ROCK, TX-La Frontera Village fetched a premium as a St. Louis-based real estate company bought the 535,000-sf shopping center from the joint venture that developed it.

Sansone Group paid $78.1 million or $145.98 per sf to Developers Diversified Realty and Coventry Real Estate Partners for the center, which makes up about two-thirds of La Frontera's retail space. The asking price had been $75 million.

The shopping center, which opened in fall 2000, was the first retail element of the 328-acre, mixed-use La Frontera development. The center's anchor retailers are Barnes & Noble, Bed Bath & Beyond, Office Depot, Marshall's, Old Navy, Hobby Lobby and Circuit City. The center also has a Kohl's store and a Lowe's Home Improvement store, but those properties were not included in the sale.

The joint venture that owned the center was known as the Retail Value Investment Program, whose entities were Cleveland-based DDR, Plainfield, CT-based Coventry and New York-based Prudential Real Estate Investors.

To date this year, the joint venture has sold six properties for a total of $262 million. The price it received for the Village at La Frontera was more than double the average amount generated by the other five sales.

A DDR contact confirmed the sale to Sansone Group. A Sansone principal did not return calls from GlobeSt.com. The company, founded in 1957, manages more than 13.5 million sf of retail, industrial and office properties and about 2,000 residential units, according to information on its Web site.

In 1998, DDR and Sansone formed a joint venture to develop and own retail projects in the Midwest. DDR also was to acquire 15 shopping centers from Sansone as well as buy a 50% stake in Sansone's operating company.