BH Properties recently acquired Preston Shepard Place, a 361,780-square-foot community retail center in Plano. The acquisition is the first retail transaction in 2021 for BH Properties.

Built in 1995, Preston Shepard Place is located at the highly trafficked intersection of Old Shepard Place and Preston Road. The 31-acre center has 1,831 surface parking spaces.

Anchored by Marshalls, Burlington and Tuesday Morning, Preston Shepard Place was 55 percent leased at closing. BH Properties believes it can increase occupancy and NOI significantly within 12 to 18 months, according to Scott Henry, BH Properties’ director of acquisitions.

“Preston Shepard Place is an underutilized retail site primed for upward leasing momentum and increased traffic patterns,” said Henry. “With 163,002 square feet of vacancy, we have plenty of runway to generate future cash flow growth. We plan to accommodate a wide variety of retailers by demising the larger vacancies into smaller spaces. The high-traffic location and asset dynamics provide an opportunity to generate significant NOI growth.”

Preston Shepard Place had a 94.4 percent occupancy from 2008 to 2018 and its anchor retailers prospered during that time as Marshalls tallied continuous year-over-year sales growth and Tuesday Morning’s sales volume was 52 percent above the national average. The majority of the existing vacancies had nothing to do with the local economy or the fundamentals of the center but instead was due to five corporate retail bankruptcies.