North Carolina Investor Returns to Chicago for More Retail Real Estate

A North Carolina investor has bought 16 retail spaces in two major retail corridors on Chicago’s North Side, continuing its recent push into the city.

Asana Partners recently bought the low-rise buildings on Halsted Street in Lincoln Park and on Damen Avenue in Bucktown, according to people familiar with the deal.

Mid-America Real Estate, which represented Atlanta-based seller Invesco, announced the more than 75,000-square-foot deal this week in a statement that did not name the buyer or sale price.

CoStar News could not determine a price, and the deal does not yet show up on Cook County property records online. Asana and Invesco did not respond to requests for comment from CoStar News.

The deal comes during an ongoing slowdown in property sales throughout the country amid rising interest rates and other economic concerns. But some investors, such as Asana, have continued making deals in Chicago.

Asana began its push into Chicago in 2019, and it has acquired several buildings in the fast-growing Fulton Market district, including one where last year it landed a Patagonia flagship store at 1155 W. Fulton.

Charlotte-based Asana has more than $7 billion in assets under management throughout the country, according to the firm’s website.

Tenants in the Chicago portfolio include Lululemon, Warby Parker, Bluemercury, Lush Cosmetics, Barry’s Boot Camp and Chicago-based restaurant group Lettuce Entertain You, including its popular Halsted restaurant Summer House Santa Monica.

The buildings are in two of the wealthiest North Side neighborhoods, and some include apartment units on upper floors, according to Mid-America.

The buildings are at 1929, 1931, 1937, 1941, 1947, 1954 and 1962 N. Halsted St. and 1611-1617, 1627-1633 and 1727-1731 N. Damen Ave., according to the brokerage.

Invesco bought the Damen properties for just over $25.7 million in 2014 and added the Halsted buildings for almost $37.9 million in February 2020, just before the onset of the pandemic, according to county property records. Both of those purchases were from Convexity Properties, the real estate arm of Chicago-based trading firm DRW.

Invesco also recently sold a 398-unit apartment tower in Chicago’s Streeterville neighborhood for just over $173 million to Miami-based Crescent Heights. That was well below the $240 million-plus that Invesco paid for the 50-story North Water Apartments tower in 2016.

The Halsted properties are almost 96% leased, with a weighted average lease term of more than six years, according to Mid-America materials. The Damen properties are almost 87% leased, with a weighted average lease term of more than four years.

Damen was hit the hardest by the pandemic among top North Side retail avenues, according to a report by Stone Real Estate, with vacancy surging to almost 30%. Last year, that fell to 19.4% as the street continued a transition from its traditional base of edgy clothing and restaurants to services such as child care, healthcare, pet care and banking, according to the report.

Service retailers last year made up more than 35% of the Damen tenancy, up from just 12% the previous year, according to the Stone Real Estate report.

“This is an investment in a street that’s in transition,” the report’s author, Stone Real Estate broker Will Winter, told CoStar News. He is not involved in the Asana deal.

By comparison, the Armitage Avenue corridor in Lincoln Park had just 2.9% vacancy last year, according to the report, as the street continued its emergence as a place for online retailers to open shops. The Halsted buildings Asana bought are along the eastern edge of the Armitage shopping corridor.

“I see that as a situation where a rising tide lifts all ships,” Winter said of Halsted. “A lot of groups want to be around what’s happening on Armitage, and there’s not a lot of vacancy on Halsted either.”

Invesco was represented in the sale by Mid-America Real Estate brokers Joe Girardi and Rick Drogosz.