Uptown City Apartments Changes Hands

Despite a lagging market for commercial real estate, apartment buildings continue to be a valuable and sought after commodity among investors. Dallas-based Invesco Real Estate paid $30.1 million for Uptown City Apartments, a price that works out to nearly $185,000 per apartment unit. The seller was Farmington Hills, Mich.-based Village Green Companies and its partner Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. The deal closed on September 2.

Uptown City Apartments is actually two separate buildings that stand a few blocks apart at 714 and 1220 West Lake Street, respectively, and offers a combined 163 apartments. Uptown City Apartments was 98 percent leased at the time the deal closed. The development includes 222 enclosed parking spaces and some retail space.

The Uptown City deal marks the second large local apartment deal to close within the last month, according to local property sales records.The Boston-based Intercontinental Real Estate Corp. bought the 353-unit International Village in Bloomington for $30.1 million, in a deal that closed in August. The property was 98 percent full The pricing on that deal works out to roughly $85,000 per unit. Earlier this year, Seattle-based Olympic Investors paid $24 million for The Cosmopolitan, a 255-unit building in the Lowertown area of downtown St. Paul. That deal closed in January.

Village Green still has interests in 6 local apartments. The company’s latest project, the 213-unit Eitel Building City Apartments, opened in January near Loring Park in Minneapolis. Village Green also plans to develop the 175-unit Mill District City Apartments in downtown Minneapolis along Washington Avenue near the Guthrie Theater on which another developer once planned condos. Construction is slated to start this winter. Courtesy Finance and Commerce.