Editors’ Weekly News Roundup May 26 – May 30
Connect CRE has chronicled the ebb and flow of investor sentiment over the years, since commercial real estate players’ willingness to commit (or not) can be as important as property sector fundamentals or the availability of capital. As a case in point, our top story of the post-Memorial Day week chronicled the recent thinking of would-be investors.
Titled CRE Investors Take a Pause While Waiting for Uncertainty to Clear, the story was based on a quarterly report from SitusAMC. The report found that although there’s been a pullback in activity lately, investor sentiment toward CRE improved in the first quarter of 2025 as the asset class was increasingly viewed as a safe haven following early April policy announcements and equity market chaos.
Even amid market uncertainty, deals continue to get done, and a grocery-anchored retail center looks like the kind of acquisition that won’t be going out of style anytime soon. The deal for Grand Covina Plaza in the Los Angeles metro area chronicled in Longpoint Acquires Stater Bros.-Anchored Covina Center was just such a transaction, and the property offered the buyer upside potential in the form of an 11% vacancy rate.
“Grand Covina Plaza generated significant interest resulting in double digit offer counts and strong overall feedback from the market,” said JLL’s Dan Tyner, who led the team representing the seller. The center benefits from a dense trade area, home to more than 180,000 people within a three-mile radius. The story was our second most-read for the week.
Along with grocery-anchored retail, industrial development in hotspots for the sector represents another sure bet, and south-central Pennsylvania certainly qualifies as a hub. Trammell Crow Company’s latest project, York County Trade Center, was the basis for our third most-read story, TCC Breaks Ground on Massive Warehouse in Pennsylvania.
When completed, the 376,000-square-foot property in Carroll Township will offer an array of Class A features including 40-foot clear heights. TCC’s John Pollock commented that it will serve as “a key logistics hub for users looking for easy access to major East Coast markets and a gateway to transcontinental trade.”
Residential conversion has been in the headlines on Connect CRE over the course of 2025, and such conversions may mean adaptation of other property types to residential use or switching between rental and for-sale apartments. As reported in our fourth most-read story, Tucson Investor Converting Apartments to Condos, Vertical Street Ventures decided to go the for-sale route.
The property in question is Redondo Tower, a 96-unit high-rise located in downtown Tucson. Berkadia’s Vin Basa secured a $26-million cash-neutral refinancing through a debt fund in support of the conversion.
The deal financing was also a key element of the week’s fifth most-read story, Merchant Hotel Building in Portland Sells to Restaurant Owner. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places, the circa-1880 property traded to restaurateur Adam Milne with a combination of SBA financing and CRE financing.
Milne acquired the Merchant Hotel for a fraction of what NBP Capital paid to acquire it in 2017. He hopes to lease out its office space to a nonprofit or small business.
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