Jones Lang LaSalle

Edison Mall Sells for $20M-Plus
By Sean Ryan
Last updated: January 3, 2006 08:00am

Sean Ryan is associate editor of Real Estate New Jersey.
(For more retail coverage, click GlobeSt.com/RETAIL.)
EDISON, NJ-Wharton Realty Group has acquired the ShopRite-anchored Edison Mall for a price in excess of $20 million. The seller was GE Capital Real Estate.

The 105,000-sf retail center, located at Route 1 and Old Post Road, is 100% occupied, including other tenants such as North Fork Bank and Dots. John Hoffman, Matthew Schnurr and Michael Harrington of the Grubb & Ellis Institutional Investment Team brokered the deal on behalf of GE Capital.

The transaction closed in a “highly compressed timeframe” of only 20 days from beginning to end, according to Schnurr, who says Wheaton saw the purchase as a value-added opportunity thanks to Edison Mall’s below-market leases. “The opportunity was highly contested by a host of institutional as well as private investors,” adds Hoffman.

Wheaton Realty Group is an Eatontown-based retail and office investor which used a 1031-exchange requirement to purchase the property. “Very rarely do you get a 1031 where everything works perfectly: the debt, the equity, the financing. This just blew everyone away,” Schnurr says.