Carnegie Companies Buys Tiffany Plaza for $7.95M

BOARDMAN, Ohio — After about four months of being on the market, the Tiffany Plaza Shopping Center was sold to a Solon-based real estate firm for nearly $8 million.

The sale of the 124,041-square-foot retail plaza to Carnegie Companies LLC closed Jan. 24 for $7,950,000, according to the office of the Mahoning County Auditor. The seller was Mayo Family Ltd., who had owned the property since 1990, according to public records.

“It’s a well-positioned property as far as retail properties go,” says Bill Kutlick, exclusive agent for the property. “It has great exposure with the freeway and is obviously well-positioned on [U.S. Route] 224.”

Location was a primary selling point for Carnegie, as was the composition of the tenants in the plaza, says Cole Pesses, director of acquisitions and dispositions for the firm. Established in 1927, Carnegie manages more than 40 properties in 14 states and specializes in multi-tenant retail, says Pesses, who represents the fourth generation of the family-owned firm.

What made Tiffany attractive was its “stability of longer-term leases with tenants with whom we have a good relationship with,” he says. With its current crop of tenants, Tiffany Plaza is a good “daily needs” shopping center, he says.

“We focus primarily on neighborhood shopping centers with a daily needs component,” Pesses says. “Obviously it’s a changing world in the retail landscape, so you have to be diligent. And we believe these types of tenant and services are going to be successful long term.”

One space of interest is the former TGI Fridays, which closed its doors in May 2015 after being there for more than 20 years. Carnegie has “some interest from a varying group of potential tenants,” though Pesses can’t elaborate further, he says.

“I think there’s a variety of different uses that I can see being successful there,” he notes.

Built in 1988 and expanded in 1991, the plaza. located at 7121-7165 Tiffany Blvd., sits on 12.2 acres and is anchored by a Marc’s grocery store. Other tenants include AT&T, Sherwin-WIlliams, Window Depot, Catullo Prime Meats, Classic Bakery, Mocha House, Quality Mattress, Pebblestone Flooring, Pulp Juice and Smoothie Bar and Boardman Dialysis Center.

It formerly housed a Phar-Mor Inc. discount drug store until a fraud and embezzlement scheme forced the company’s bankruptcy and liquidation.

Kutlick, broker/owner of Kutlick Realty LLC, had been working with three potential buyers for the property, two of which were from out of town, and the other was local. The final sale price was “right in the range we anticipated,” he says. The transaction took Kutlick 30 days to close from contract execution, he adds.

“People who buy these types of centers are pretty seasoned investors,” Kutlick said. “They know what they’re looking for.”

In the case of Tiffany Plaza, it’s location that made it desirable, he said. The corridor along Route 224 near the Interstate 680 interchange is seeing a lot of activity with a Starbucks cafe and Popeyes Louisiana Chicken being built across 224 and a new shopping plaza there nearing completion, he said.

Tiffany Square Plaza, which abuts Tiffany Plaza Shopping Center, has also seen much development over the past seven years. After that 178,000-square-foot plaza underwent a makeover in 2013, in welcomed a number of new tenants, including Ashley HomeStore, Fin Feather Fur Outfitters, Hobby Lobby, Tuesday Morning and Marshall’s, which joined existing tenants Michael Alberini’s Restaurant & Wine Shop and Muscle Connection.

McDonald’s and Chick-fil-A also built new restaurants on the site, with the former proving to be “extremely successful,” and adding a second drive-thru lane with canopy, Kutlick says.

The most recent addition to the plaza is the Panera Bread that opened in September 2018. All of the tenants “continue to be very stable and increase,” he says.

Kutlick expects the corridor to continue to thrive, with the former Golden Corral space under contract and three prospects looking to possibly subdivide the former Toys R Us.

“We have a very vibrant commercial market in this area,” he says. “And more importantly, the retailers are successful. You don’t see many vacancies.”

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