Hamilton Marketplace at 130 Marketplace Blvd. in Hamilton — Courtesy: Marcus & Millichap
By Joshua Burd
Paramount Realty has acquired a 485,000-square-foot retail property in Hamilton for more than $100 million, in a newly announced deal by Marcus & Millichap.
The brokerage team represented the seller, SITE Centers, in the trade of the ShopRite-anchored Hamilton Marketplace at 130 Marketplace Blvd. They noted that the deal is the largest single-asset shopping center transaction to close in New Jersey since 2017, citing the strength of a tenant roster that also includes Kohl’s, Ross, Staples, Barnes & Noble, Michaels, Old Navy, Ulta and others.
Brad Nathanson, executive director, and JP Colussi, senior director of Marcus & Millichap’s Institutional Property Advisors division, marketed the 485,094-square-foot property and procured the New-Jersey based buyer. The firm’s Sunny Sajnani, executive managing director, and Travis Headapohl, associate director, also represented the buyer in procuring financing with a national life insurance company.
“Hamilton Marketplace is in the top 1 percent of most-visited shopping centers in the nation and one of the most-visited open-air shopping centers in New Jersey,” Colussi said. “The center’s high anchor retention and the chain-leading sales volumes of top retailers make it one of the nation’s best-performing grocery-anchored power centers. Of the 17 original anchors, 13 are still in place and in the past three years, nine anchor tenants exercised their contractual obligations.”
Constructed in phases beginning in the early 2000s, Hamilton Marketplace sits roughly eight miles south of Princeton near the confluence of Route 130 and Interstate 195, which feeds into the New Jersey Turnpike. The property’s 65,155-square-foot ShopRite anchors a tenant roster that is 99 percent occupied.
“Given this was on the open market for the first time since initial development, the size of the transaction coupled with the powerful metrics of its performance drew a deep pool of institutional capital that we haven’t seen have interest since before COVID, as well as large private family offices that knew the value of controlling over 128 acres with highway frontage,” Nathanson said. “Best-of-class power centers, have recognized some of the best resiliency and rent appreciation within the product type since 2021 given the lack of new construction and the high re-tenanting cost that has appreciated rents at an above average rate. This in turn has created a demand driver especially for older vintage power centers like Hamilton Marketplace that have strong performance drivers among their existing tenant base.”
Marcus added that the last New Jersey shopping center to trade for more than $100 million was Centerton Square in Mount Laurel, NJ in 2017. Nathanson and Colussi also represented the seller and procured the buyer in that transaction.
“In the current credit cycle, grocery-anchored large format retail has risen to become a favored product type with life companies,” Sajnani said. “Through a competitive marketing process, IPA procured and negotiated multiple life company quotes providing the buyer with a financing structure that best met their investment goals.
“Retail fundamentals are currently the strongest that I have ever seen in my 20-year career. They are driving institutions, REITs and all types of new private groups to push for making a hard push to reallocate their portfolios into large format shopping centers.”
