December 31, 2007 Monday

Prime commercial sites still sitting vacant

By: Benjamin Kepple, New Hampshire Union Leader

MANCHESTER - Two marquee properties once owned by the Furniture World chain remain on the block for sale or lease, close to a year since the chain closed its doors.

A consortium of investors had bought those and other Furniture World sites last fall, when the investors worked out a sale-and-lease-back arrangement with the chain. The investors in the deal included SB Capital, an affiliate of Ohio-based Schottenstein Stores Corp., real-estate investment trust Kimco Realty Corp. and The Nassi Group, a California-based asset and inventory disposal firm.

Terms of the deal weren't disclosed at the time, but records show the chain's sites sold for tens of millions of dollars.

One of the two premier Furniture World locations -- at 1300 S. Porter St. in Manchester , just off I-293 -- sold for more than $13.1 million, city tax records show. The other, the Furniture World building at 168 Daniel Webster Highway in Nashua - located on a busy stretch of retail establishments -- was sold for about $5.8 million.

American Retail Properties, a Boston-based real-estate services firm, is listing the properties for sale or lease, but plays them very close to the vest. For months, repeated calls to the company requesting comment about the properties have not been returned.

According to a company flyer about the Manchester property, the location has 150,000 square feet of space on two levels and sits on 11.71 acres of land. Built in 2004, it has 150 parking spaces. As for the Nashua property, it has about 83,500 square feet on two levels -- most of which is designed for sales. About 6,900 square feet are set aside for warehouse space. The building sits on 6.41 acres of land and has 305 parking spaces.

Additionally, American Retail Properties is advertising space for lease at a recently sold Furniture World location in Salem.

In May, Taurus South Broadway LLC, an affiliate of Boston real-estate firm Taurus Investment Holdings LLC, paid $5.275 million for the 60,000 square foot property at 419 S. Broadway. Since then, the property has been repositioned into a small retail development with several spaces now available for lease, according to an American Retail Properties flyer.

Taurus Investment Holdings had also bought another Furniture World site back in May, at 26 Lowell Road, Salem, for $6.075 million. It sold that property shortly thereafter to Lowell Audubon Holdings LLC, an affiliate of a Texas real-estate company, for $6.4 million.

The properties are three of five American Retail Properties is listing in New Hampshire. The other two are the Shaw's Plaza on Route 125 in Plaistow, and the 300 Main Street Marketplace in Nashua.

At those properties, the company has listed six spaces totaling 15,000 square feet for lease at the Shaw's Plaza and seven spaces totaling 60,000 square feet for lease at 300 Main Street. Most of those spaces are sized for small or medium-sized businesses, although a junior anchor space of 40,500 square feet is available at the 300 Main Street Marketplace.

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