A seven-property grocery-anchored retail portfolio spanning Phoenix and Tucson has changed hands for $108.7 million, with 11North Partners taking over a collection of shopping centers that stretches across five Arizona cities and sits 96 percent occupied. The seller, A&C Properties Inc., offloaded the entire package in a single transaction anchored by Fry's Food & Drug stores.
Deal Details and the Properties Involved
According to rebusinessonline.com, the portfolio totals 422,949 square feet and includes Gilbert Fiesta Marketplace, Shops at Gilbert Fiesta and Township Plaza in Gilbert, Riggs Marketplace in Chandler, Lindsay Marketplace in Mesa, Tatum Plaza in Cave Creek and Randolph Plaza in Tucson. As reported by Connect CRE, the portfolio features a diverse mix of daily-needs and necessity-based retailers alongside its grocery anchor.
JLL Capital Markets represented A&C Properties Inc. in the sale, with the investment sales and advisory team led by Patrick Dempsey, Tess Berghoff and Ross Jorgensen, per the same rebusinessonline.com account. The firm's debt advisory team, led by Jarrod Howard, separately arranged $66.4 million in acquisition financing through an insurance company for 11North Partners.
Why Investors Are Circling Grocery-Anchored Centers
The transaction fits a broader pattern in the Phoenix retail market, where commercialsearch.com notes JLL identified below-market rents across the portfolio as a potential source of future income growth. Connect CRE also points to tenant curation and lease renewals as avenues the new owner could pursue to capture that upside, while the Phoenix and Tucson markets more broadly continue to attract retail investment capital amid population growth, favorable business climates and strong consumer spending patterns.
The acquisition marks 11North Partners' first investment in Arizona's retail market, expanding its necessity-based retail platform into its eighth state, according to commercialsearch.com. It is not the firm's only recent move: the same report notes that in May 2026, 11North and joint venture partner Bain Capital acquired five open-air grocery-anchored centers totaling about 757,000 square feet across California, Florida, Texas and Virginia for approximately $300 million, and that same month 11North separately acquired West Town Corners, a 284,497-square-foot center in Altamonte Springs, Florida, for $59.5 million.
A Tight Market for Necessity Retail
The deal lands amid historically low vacancy in Phoenix retail. The Matthews Phoenix, AZ Retail Market Report for the second quarter of 2026 put vacancy at 4.7 percent, with roughly 941,000 square feet of net absorption and average asking rents reaching $27.20 per square foot, up 4.8 percent year over year. The same report found transaction volume near $616 million for the quarter, with assets trading at an average of $263 per square foot and market cap rates averaging 7.0 percent, and noted that investors remained particularly interested in grocery-anchored centers and necessity-based retail assets.
By the third quarter of 2026, vacancy had tightened further to 4.4 percent, unchanged from the prior quarter but down 10 basis points year over year, according to the Kidder Mathews figures cited by commercialsearch.com. Net absorption so far in 2026 stood at about 1.75 million square feet, down 3 percent from the same point last year, while nearly 2.6 million square feet of retail space remained under construction in Phoenix during the third quarter, almost 20 percent less than a year earlier.
On LinkedIn, commercial real estate professional Brian Harper flagged the pricing math behind the deal, writing that the portfolio was acquired for $109 million, or approximately $258 per square foot.
