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Carmel’s Merchants’ Square shopping center has been sold to a Charlotte, North Carolina-based property management company, the buyer announced Tuesday.
The sale of Merchants’ Square to Big V Property Group from Jericho, New York-based Kimco Realty closed Monday for an undisclosed price. Big V partnered with San Diego-based commercial investment firm Equity Street Capital on the sale.
The 232,000-square-foot Merchants’ Square, northwest of the intersection of East 116th Street and Keystone Parkway, is an open-air shopping center with businesses that include Planet Fitness, Flix Brewhouse, Cost Plus World Market, Petco and Dollar Tree.
The sale did not include the 76,000-square-foot location where Quincy, Illinois-based Niemann Foods Inc. plans to open a Harvest Market grocery store this fall. Niemann Foods purchased the store property last year for $7 million from New York-based RPT Realty. (Kimco Realty acquired RPT Realty at the beginning of this year.)
“We are thrilled to expand our portfolio into the Indiana market with the acquisition of Merchants’ Square,” Big V President Jeff Rosenberg said in written remarks. “This property is a testament to our commitment to strategic growth and investment in areas with strong economic potential.”
Merchants’ Square was built in 1970 as the Target-anchored and enclosed Keystone Square Mall and redeveloped into an open-air center and renamed in the mid-1990s.
The shopping center has experienced challenges over the years due to vacancies and the closure of the Marsh store in its anchor location along 116th Street.
In 2013, urban planner Jeff Speck produced a mixed-use redevelopment plan for Merchants’ Square that never came to fruition.
Merchants’ Square is Big V’s first property acquisition in Indiana. The company, founded in 1942 by William and Viola Rosenberg as a single supermarket in Florida, New York, owns and operates more than 50 shopping centers, mostly in the southern and southeastern United States.
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The grocery store closure was a troubling time, but as far as I can tell Merchants Square is pretty much full at this point.
I also believe this was the second ever Starbucks location in the metro area after the Butler University one opened up.
As a current Carmel resident, I wish the Target was able to stick it out. It’d be far more convenient than the one on 421.
There is a Target on 151