A New York-based real estate investment and property management company recently bought The Village at Myrtle Grove on Carolina Beach Road for $9.5 million, according to a news release and a New Hanover County deed.

The Staples-anchored shopping center was one of three purchased by a Big V Properties limited liability company from Mount Pleasant, South Carolina-based Ziff Properties Inc.

"We like the Wilmington market," said Jeff Rosenberg, CEO of Big V Properties and managing partner of Big V Capital, on Tuesday afternoon. "We think it's growing and vibrant, and we're looking forward to working within the market to bring some new tenants to the shopping center." 

The Village at Myrtle Grove, a 74,370-square-foot center in the 5500 and 5600 blocks of Carolina Beach Road, includes local businesses in addition to national tenants. The center was about 87 percent occupied at the time of the sale. Home Depot owns its portion of the property, a more than 100,000-square-foot building and about 10 acres, according to property tax records.

Big V Properties' purchase in New Hanover County also came with two outparcels of a little less than an acre each and some unused land next to Staples.

"We have a whole bunch of outparcels [among the firm's properties and including The Village at Myrtle Grove] that we're working on for development purposes," Rosenberg said.

Rosenberg said Big V Properties will continue to market the existing spaces that are not occupied in The Village at Myrtle Grove to strong national, local and regional tenants. 

"We have multiple locations of national retailers in our shopping centers, and we'll be talking to them about these spaces as well," he said.  

The sale of The Village at Myrtle Grove marks Ziff’s complete exit from Wilmington’s commercial real estate market and the entrance of Big V, which is headquartered in Florida, New York. In North Carolina, the company also owns a center in Rocky Mount.

Big V Properties, which includes affiliate Big V Capital, focuses “on acquiring and managing 50,000SF-400,000SF class B neighborhood and community shopping centers in strong secondary demographic markets throughout the southeast United States,” according to the firm’s website. “We seek to acquire assets at well below replacement cost, with attractive current and projected yields and with significant upside opportunities.”

Big V Properties owns and/or manages 31 shopping centers, mainly in the Southeastern U.S., Rosenberg said.

In addition to The Village at Myrtle Grove, the Ziff portfolio of retail properties sold to Rosenberg's company also included Lancer Center in Lancaster, South Carolina, and Lanier Plaza in Brunswick, Georgia, for a total of $24 million, according to a Ziff news release.

Cushman & Wakefield’s Atlanta-based retail investment sales group was part of the team that brokered the off-market sale of the three centers, the Ziff release said.