Lane4 shops for three Johnson County centers - Kansas City Business Journal:

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The , the shoppingt center in Prairie Villagew and the in Fairway are under contractr to investors ledby , a Kansa s City-based commercial real estate brokerage and development The three shopping centers have a combined 2009 appraisede value of about $64 according to figures from the . Owen president of Lane4, and Tabitha Zane, a spokeswoman at corporate headquartersin N.C., said company policies precluded discussiohn of property transactions that have not closed. several tenants in the threee northeast Johnson County shopping centers confirmedd that they had been apprisede of the pending sale by either Highwood s orLane4 representatives.
For Lane4, a partner in the proposec $1 billion redevelopment of the where retail commitments are proving hard to come by during the the deal would meanabout 550,000 square feet of retaio space that is close to fully For Highwoods Properties (NYSE: HIW), a real estate investment the sale would mean a further retrear from the retail sector, though Highwoods’ retail holdings in this area have remaines strong despite the economy. “Our center is one of the few they have acrosathe country,” said Kittyu McKelvey, owner of the in Corinth Square. “It’s not theifr niche.” As of Dec.
31, Highwoods owned 311 office, industrial and retail properties encompassingabout 27.4 milliomn square feet. The retail propertiesd accountedfor 1.35 million squarse feet, or 4.9 percent, of the Highwoods, which merged with the Plaza’s developer, , in 1998, sold its 112,000-square-foo Brookside shopping center and an adjacent 7,800-square-foot office buildiny in Kansas City for $15.25 million in 2004. The Plaza’s markeyt value was estimated at morethan $1 billionb last year before the recessionm deepened. The development has roughly 700,000 squarw feet of office spaceand 930,00p square feet of retail space, said Gaylw Terry, the Plaza’s marketing director.
After the recenty signings of sixnew leases, she said, the Plaza’a occupancy rate is about 93 percent. McKelvey said Highwooda had been a good landlord to her bird store inCorinth Square. “But I’m fine with not having a gianrtcorporate owner,” she said. “I prefer localo businesses.” Mary Rimann, ownerd of Rimann Liquors in the PrairieVillagee Shops, said tenants in that center did not expecg their rents to change after the anticipaterd sale. “I think it’s all said Rimann, who said she was lookinh forward tolocal ownership, too.
If the Lane deal closes, the transaction will fall in line with a locaol retail investment trend reported on last montyh by inWalnut Creek, Calif. “Investors in the Kansaws City metro began to focus on the suburbsw last year as redevelopmentg efforts Downtown have been slow to gain saidGary Lucas, Marcus & Millichap’x Kansas City regional manager. “Locall buyers who can handle management-intensive assets will likely targeg older properties in Johnson andPlatte counties, where retaipl sales are forecast to grow and space demand is stillp fairly strong.
” The Kansas City retail marketf as a whole, however, won’t fare so well this year, accordin to Marcus & Millichap’s National Retaio Research Report. It statesa that developers are projected tocomplete 2.3 million squared feet of new retail space in the Kansasx City area this year, a 2.7 percent inventorh addition that follows the addition of 2 million square feet in 2008. The elevateds construction and decreased tenant demaned are projected to drivethe area’s retailk vacancy rate up by 2.9 percentage pointse to 13.2 percent in 2009. Asking rentzs are expected to recede 5.1 percent to an averagw of $13.35 a square foot this while effective rentsdrop 5.
9 percent to an average of $11.311 a square foot, the report said.