WILMINGTON – Just a year after last trading hands, Christina Crossing, the grocery-anchored shopping center that helped revitalize the South Market Street corridor in Wilmington, was recently sold for $29.8 million, according to county land records.
The deal is the third largest property sale in the state this year and the largest retail deal, according to Delaware Business Times records.
Located at 501 S. Walnut St., Christina Crossing was built by Buccini/Pollin Group and includes a 70,000-square-foot ShopRite grocery store that was one of the first full grocery stores to be built in city limits in many years when it opened in 2008. It is one of the highest trafficked grocery stores in the state, according to Placer.ai data.
A joint venture by New York-based investment firms DRA Advisors LLC and KPR Centers acquired Christina Crossing in July 2022 for $25.8 million as part of a larger portfolio acquisition from Cedar Realty Trust, a publicly traded real estate investment trust.
The sale to First National Realty Partners (FNRP), a national private equity commercial real estate firm, marks a 15% return on investment in the shopping center for the DRA-KPR joint venture.
FNRP has a portfolio of grocery-anchored shopping centers around the country and its acquisition of the 119,446-square-foot shopping center marks its entry into Delaware. Its previous closest asset is a grocery-anchored plaza in Voorhees, N.J.
Aside from ShopRite, the shopping center features other tenants including Rainbow, Cricket Wireless, and Wingstop. Christina Crossing sees combined traffic counts of over 54,000 vehicles per day, FNRP said.
“Christina Crossing is located in one of the fastest-growing MSAs in the northeast,” Matt Annibale, senior director of acquisitions for FNRP, said in a statement announcing the sale. “The property’s strategic location adjacent to more than 80 acres of future development, market-dominant anchor and strong supporting tenant mix, position it to perform well for years to come.”
In taking over Christina Crossing, FNRP will be at the heart of redevelopment efforts in the so-called Riverfront East, an ambitious plan to redevelop and reimagine the South Market Street corridor. Led by the Riverfront Development Corporation, the plan will raze and develop a portion of the eastern bank of the Christina River over the next decade with aims to build a new commerce center for the city.
The third phase of that plan would address land between South Market Street and South Walnut Street. That would include an agreed-upon reimagining of the Christina Crossing shopping center, with a grocery store remaining for the long term, officials have said.
