Hendersonville's hot retail market lands another shopping center

Georgia developer buys land to build a center anchored by three big-box stores

Email | Print By Richard Lawson

Hendersonville, a center of booming retail real estate development, is about to get more of same.

Victory Real Estate Investments of Columbus, Ga., plans to build a shopping center on a portion of 43 acres it bought from The Mathews Co. for $11.4 million. Seller The Mathews Co. has owned the property along the newly extended Indian Lake Boulevard for 25 years. Terry Smith and Jason Powell, brokers with NAI Nashville, brokered the deal.

Jim Lofton, Victory's vice president for leasing and development, said his firm simultaneously sold 16 acres to Brentwood-based Corporate Realty Advisors, which plans to construct retail condominiums that would be sold to small, local-type retailers who want to own their space rather than lease.

Victory owns three shopping centers in Tennessee. They are located in Crossville, Sparta and Knoxville.

Victory's site plans for Hendersonville show three anchor tenants. Loftin said the center will be a traditional one with big-box stores. "I am not at a point where I can announce tenants," Loftin said.

Plans on the company's web site show a Hampton Inn and a Cracker Barrel Old Country Store on one of the out-parcels. The total size of the center isn't listed.

Victory landed a prime piece of property in the hotbed of retail development in Hendersonville. Over the past couple of years, the city has been on a retail tear as the sleepy bedroom community, long underserved for retail, begins to add shopping options.

Developers like the fact that the average household income exceeds $75,000. Though that is lower than Williamson County's more than $100,000, the city of some 74,000 continues to add rooftops by the hundreds.

There is Vastland Realty Group's Glenbrook Shopping Center, Glenbrook West and the Shoppes at Glenbrook, all of off Vietnam Veterans Parkway. Developers built a Lowe's Home Improvement store and other retail. The Home Depot and a Wal-Mart Supercenter landed across Indian Lake Boulevard from Victory's land.

In mid-July, Hendersonville-based Halo Properties will start moving dirt on Indian Lake Village, a 260-acre mix of retail, office and residential development along Indian Lake. Halo's retail development partner, Columbus, Ohio-based Continental Real Estate, has the 500,000-square-foot Streets of Indian Lake lifestyle center and has some tenants already lined up.

Because of all the retail development around Victory's land, "this property was teed up," Powell said of the sale.