By Jon Peterson
San Diego-based Retail Opportunity Investments Corporation (ROIC) has bought a leasehold interest of a portion of the Canyon Park Shopping Center in Bothell located at the northeast corner of 228th Street Southeast and Bothell Everett Highway, according to the investor’s 2015 second quarter earnings report.
This transaction along with an anchor space bought in the Pinole Vista Shopping Center in Pinole, Calif. totaled $23.5 million. The earnings report did not state how much was paid for each investment.
ROIC did not respond to several phone calls seeking comment for this story. The company does have a regional office in Bellevue located at 15600 Northeast 8th Street.
The anchor space that was bought in Bothell totals 35,000 square feet. This had been previously occupied by an Albertson grocery store.
A new anchor tenant will be coming into the store in the future. This will be a 25,000 square foot PCC Natural Markets. This is an organic and natural foods grocery, and the tenant is planning to move into the new location next year. PCC plans to employ a total of 130 full and part-time employees in the new store. This new location is planning to target shoppers in the Bothell, Mill Creek and Woodinville communities.
Canyon Park is a grocery-anchored neighborhood shopping center. The other anchor tenant in the property is a Rite Aid. The property totals 123,167 square feet. As of the end of the second quarter the center was 89.4 percent occupied. ROIC has owned the property since July of 2011.
“I think that this is a strong asset. It has good demographics. Within a five-mile radius of the property there is a population base of 251,000,” says Erik Swanson, a vice president with Kidder Mathews in its Seattle office.
The size of the PCC store in Bothell is a fairly typical one for the company. The tenant will be working with two Seattle-based companies with its new store. These are Velocipede Architects and Woodman Construction.
This new location will be its 11th location in the greater Seattle market. Another new store that was planned to open this summer is in Columbia City.
ROIC is a self-managed real estate investment trust. The company looks to buy grocery-anchored shopping centers in densely-populated metropolitan markets across the West Coast. 10 of the company’s 64 properties are located in the Seattle area, totaling 1.3 million square feet. This portfolio was 96.8 percent occupied as of the end of the second quarter.
The properties are located in a variety of markets. These are Seattle, Kent, Lake Stevens, Bothell, Lacey, Marysville, Shoreline, Puyallup and Bellevue.
