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44 n e w h a v e n B I Z | M a y / J u n e 2 0 1 9 | n e w h a v e n b i z . c o m T H E L O O P W H AT ' S T H E D E A L Boulevard of dreams: Hamden's Dixwell Ave. dodges region's retail doldrums By Natalie Missakian R ecent brick-and-mortar store closings in Connecticut and beyond may have some investors skittish about retail properties, but the uncertain- ty didn't keep buyers away when a major property in Hamden's busiest shopping corridor hit the market last fall. Stamford-based investor Har-Zait LLC purchased the 34,888-square-foot retail center at 2045 Dixwell Ave. for $5 million in March. e building houses a Bed Bath & Beyond and a CVS Phar- macy on 3.64 acres across from Hamden High School. "High-quality retail centers with national tenants are still in de- mand," says Steve Miller, principal of the Woodbridge commercial real estate firm Levey Miller Maretz LLC, who represented the seller in the transaction. "We had many parties interested in the property." Buyer's broker Ken Ginsberg of Real Living Wareck D'Ostilio's commercial division said the deal, like so many in the real estate arena, boiled down simply to a matter of good timing. Ginsberg was sitting in a monthly meeting of the Greater New Haven Board of Realtors' Commercial Investment Division when he heard Miller announce that the CVS building on the Dixwell Ave. parcel was available. Around the same time, one of his best clients was hunting for a new investment property. "When I heard the announce- ment, I immediately thought of my client," Ginsberg recalls. "He just had a deal that fell apart two months earlier, so he was fresh in my mind." Ginsberg told his client about the property, and aer some initial back and forth, things moved quickly. By January 1, it was under contract; the deal closed March 14. "It was a great property, we priced it correctly and we had a really good buyer," Miller said. In an uncertain retail climate, investors may worry about going months without rent if their ten- ants' businesses go belly-up, leav- ing behind tough-to-fill vacancies. But brokers said the 2045 Dixwell property had a number of qualities that mitigate the risk — including a prime location on a busy corner in a shopping district. "ere were two good, stable tenants in there that had been there for a long time," Ginsberg explains. "e rents were on the low side, so there was some potential [for higher rents] if the tenants le or didn't exercise their option to renew." e property had last changed hands in the early 1970s when the current seller, ZPride LLC, owned by a Bethany family, bought it to operate a Buick dealership, accord- ing to Miller. Over the ensuing decades, the address has housed a number of different retail outlets, Miller explains. Before the car dealership, the site was an A&P supermarket. In the 1990s, it housed a pair of chain restaurants, Red Lobster and Olive Garden, before being redeveloped as a CVS (10,900 square feet) and Bed Bath & Beyond (24,046 square feet) in 2002. Miller says the owners decided to sell last year aer retiring and mov- ing to Florida. He said Levey, Miller, Maretz has managed the property for the last 30 years through each iteration and will continue to do so for the new owner. e initial asking price was $6 million, but Miller says the seller was in the end satisfied with the sale price. "It was right where we thought it was going to end up," he says. n Before this spring, the 35,000-square-foot retail center at 2045 Dixwell Ave. hadn't changed hands in nearly half a century. Levey Miller Maretz's Miller: 'We had many parties interested in the property.' 'High-quality retail centers with national tenants are still in demand.'

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