The Thomas A Duke Company has completed the sale of a 20,000 square-foot retail center for well above the area’s market rate.
When we took on the assignment to sell the property at 42050 Grand River in Novi, the 7,000 square-foot, free-standing restaurant which anchors the retail center was vacant. Occupancy was only 30 percent. While it had been actively marketed for years, both investors and tenants thought of the property as “stale.”
The Thomas A. Duke Company entered the game with an aim to change that perception. First objective: lease the restaurant, which had been vacant for two years. We found an experienced restauranteur with a new concept. Wasabi Japanese Steakhouse—owned by a partnership group with four other locations—is the first eating establishment of its kind in Novi. Next we signed a lease with Weichert Realtors whose presence brought the center to 90 percent occupancy by late June.
We then mounted a marketing campaign to showcase this energetic turnaround of the property and quickly received three offers to purchase it. Sixty days after Weichert Realtors took occupancy we went under contract with NES USA, LLC, a cash buyer. On September 17, we closed the sale.
Under the skilled leadership of the Thomas A. Duke Company this languishing property sold for $1,550,000—roughly $78 per square foot—well above the average price-per-square-foot of shopping centers recently sold in this market.
For more information on this deal and how our expertise can be put to work for you, please contact Mark (mszerlag@thomasduke.com) or Eric Szerlag (eszerlag@thomasduke.com) at 248-476-3700.
