Abacus Capital Exits Core Dilworth Street Retail Asset

Abacus Capital (“Abacus”) is pleased to announce the successful exit of The Dilworth, a 23,248 square foot high street retail asset strategically located in the heart of the Dilworth neighborhood’s primary commercial corridor, one the most demographically favored areas in Charlotte.

Affiliates of Abacus Capital acquired the project in October 2019 for $7.075M ($304/SF) and subsequently undertook a repositioning program to restore the 16-year old asset to peak marketability reflective of the increasingly affluent surrounding neighborhood while concurrently driving rental rate accretion.

Once the base building reposition was complete, Abacus renewed, expanded and/or replaced tenants in 8 of the 10 suites over its hold period driving 25% growth in average in-place base rents while increasing value 41% before disposing of the asset for $10.0M ($430/SF) in August 2024.

“Abacus Capital is pleased to have led the successful round-trip of this irreplaceable street retail asset. Stewarding the reposition of this highly visible project from the formerly underappreciated Latta Pavilion to the newly redeveloped and rebranded The Dilworth over the past few years was a privilege – we are especially proud that along with the physical transformation we were able to deliver a great economic outcome for our clients as well,” said Wes McAdams, managing partner at Abacus Capital.

“Confronted with a global pandemic over its hold period, Abacus responded to changing market dynamics in real-time by recasting the asset’s tenant mix to focus on health and wellness-oriented users; at the time of sale 71.5% of the asset’s net rentable area was occupied by this specific cohort,” McAdams said.

Abacus Capital partner Brick Bryant added, ”The Dilworth was an early case study in Abacus Capital’s value-oriented opportunistic investment strategy – while the asset was 100% leased at the time of our 2019 acquisition, we believed that through strategic upgrades to the physical asset and overall tenant mix over time additional value could be created. We are pleased to have been able to prove that investment thesis out over our 57-month hold period.”

The Dilworth is located at 1315 East Boulevard, between Scott & Kenilworth Avenues, and was built in 2003 and renovated in 2020. Tenants at the time of the transaction included Novant Health, Konnichiwa, iDental, Shear Excellence, Genevieve Aesthetics and Sassy Nails.

Launched in 2018, Abacus Capital is a multi-strategy product type agnostic real estate investor that seeks out special situations or other tactical opportunities in which to deploy its capital, institutional experience, relationships and hands-on, solution-oriented approach to creating or unlocking value and driving investment outperformance on behalf of its partners and clients.

Adam Russ, Erin Varol & Will Register of CBRE facilitated the transaction on behalf of Abacus Capital.

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