An international investment company has entered the Chattanooga market with the first of several planned acquisitions, buying a Lookout Valley shopping center for more than $7 million.
Alea Properties, which manages office, medical office, retail and industrial properties in a half dozen U.S. states and has foreign holdings in Australia and Africa, acquired nearly 10 acres and 49,000-square-foot of retail spaces near the Walmart superstore on Cummings Highway in Chattanooga.
The shopping center, which includes a Dollar Tree and 14 other shops, was built in 2005 and was previously owned by Bright-Meyers Lookout Valley Associates, a real estate partnership managed by Fletcher Bright Realtors, according to the Hamilton County Register of Deeds.
Robert Edwards, the founder and head of Alea Properties in Franklin, Tennessee, said his firm has been eager to buy into the Chattanooga market and expects to make other commercial property purchases here in the future. Edwards said Chattanooga is the state's second-fastest growing market, and Alea has been looking for the right purchase option for several years.
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"This is the first of several acquisitions planned in this exciting market," Edwards said in a phone interview Tuesday. "This property checks all the boxes of what we are interested in investing in."
The purchase was financed by First Bank, and the sale was completed by Ellen Edwards, the chief acquisitions and leasing officer for Alea, which owns or manages about 7.5 million square feet of buildings, Robert Edwards said.
Edwards said he intends to upgrade the Lookout Valley property, lease out the remaining 2,800 square feet of vacant space and likely increase the rental rates, which have not increased in several years for some tenants.
Located next to a 203,818-square-foot Walmart superstore that opened in early 2006, the Lookout Valley shopping center is just off Interstate 24, which averages 64,258 vehicles a day. The property is near multiple industrial parks with more than 2 million square feet of industrial space, Edwards said.
The purchase follows the acquisition earlier this year by Alea Properties of a similar 126,000-square-foot Kroger-anchored shopping center in Powderly, Kentucky.
Alea is the latest outside investment firm to buy a Chattanooga shopping center in the past couple of months.
Last month, an Ontario investment firm bought the Issa Crossing shopping center in Hixson for $10.75 million from Chattanooga developer Bassam Issa, and in May, a Las Vegas real estate investment company paid $16.7 million to buy the Towne Center North shopping center, also on Highway 153 in Hixson. That 11-acre shopping center was originally developed in 2006 by the Chattanooga-based Wolford Development.
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or at 423-757-6340. Follow him on Twitter @dflessner1.