Retail Traded Again In Glenview And Nobody Said For How Much

Mid-America Real Estate Corporation's Investment Sales Group arranged the sale of Willow Creek Center, a 181,024-square-foot grocery-anchored center in Glenview, Illinois, shadow-anchored by Target. Rick Drogosz, Ben Wineman and Patrick Corrigan brokered on behalf of seller Sperry Equities. The buyer is DPI Retail, whose president described the purchase as the beginning of the firm's Chicago presence. Sperry acquired the center from Heitman in 2021 for $26.2 million.

The 2026 sale price was not disclosed.

Derived from published figures only: the 2021 basis was $144.73 per square foot. The center was marketed at $34.5 million, or $190.58 per square foot — a 31.7% ask over the 2021 basis on a five-year hold. That is an asking price, not a clearing price. No cap rate, trade basis or realized return can be derived from this transaction.

The undisclosed price is itself information. Grocery-anchored retail has spent three years as the most sought-after core-plus product in the country, and sellers of well-tenanted centers in affluent trade areas have generally been happy to publish their numbers. Silence usually means one of two things: the trade did not clear at the ask, or the buyer is assembling a market position and does not want to set a public comp for its next four purchases.

DPI's stated intent — expanding a Chicago footprint from a standing start — points toward the second. A first acquisition that prints a number becomes the floor every subsequent seller negotiates against.

What can be said with confidence: a five-year hold on suburban grocery-anchored retail bought at $145 a foot in 2021 was, at minimum, an exit into a functioning bid. Target shadow-anchorage and a rent roll of grocery, health and wellness, fast-casual and personal services is the exact tenant mix institutional capital has been chasing — necessity and service uses that neither e-commerce nor a soft consumer erodes quickly.

Implications. For 1031 buyers and private capital chasing grocery-anchored product, comps in this segment are getting harder to source precisely because the segment is competitive. Underwriting off asking prices in an undisclosed-price market is how basis errors happen; insist on verified trades. For sellers, the Glenview hold is a reminder that exits in this product type are being driven by new entrants building footprints rather than by incumbents trading among themselves — which should shape who the asset is marketed to.