Armada Hoffler Properties is selling Williams Mullen office tower in downtown Richmond

Armada Hoffler Properties Inc., the developer of the 15-story Williams Mullen center in downtown Richmond, plans to sell the property for $78 million.

The Virginia Beach-based company revealed the sale to a undisclosed buyer in a news release about its plans to acquire a $170.5 million retail portfolio.  The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2016. A spokesman for the comapny said she could not provide any other details.

Armada said the sale of the 210,000-square-foot Richmond office tower would help it finance the purchase of 11 retail centers located throughout the mid-Atlantic and the South. The properties comprise about 1.1 million square feet of space.

The core of the portfolio — representing about 75 percent of the net operating income — consists of six retail centers positioned along the I-85 corridor between Raleigh-Durham, N.C., and Greenville, S.C. The remaining five properties are each Kroger-anchored retail centers, including one in Waynesboro.

The company intends to fund the $170.5 million purchase price with the net proceeds from the recent $30 million sale of the Oceaneering International facility, a 150,000-square-foot building in Chesapeake, the pending sale of the Richmond office building and borrowings under the Armada Hoffler’s unsecured revolving credit facility.

“This is a prime opportunity for us to acquire a portfolio of retail assets anchored by credit-quality, brand-name tenants,” Louis Haddad, Armada’s president and CEO, said in a statement.
“Through this acquisition, we recycle capital into high-quality real estate, diversify our tenant base and expand our geographic footprint — all at an attractive cap rate approaching 7 percent.”

The Williams Mullen law firm relocated to the Richmond office building at 200 South 10th Street in 2010.  The building’s sale is not expected to affect the tenants in the tower, which also include accounting firm Cheery Bekaert and Capital One Commercial.

Armada Hoffler Properties is a publicly traded real estate investment trust that develops, owns and manages real estate, primarily in the mid-Atlantic region.