One of South Mississippi’s busiest shopping centers just sold. Here are the details
One of the major shopping centers in South Mississippi has a new owner, just ahead of the holiday shopping season.
Prudent Growth Partners, a private equity real estate firm based in North Carolina, announced it has completed the purchase of Indian River shopping center in D’Iberville, at the northeast quadrant of interstates 10 and 110.
Part of Lakeview Village, the center is anchored by Walmart Supercenter, Lowe’s and Academy Sports and has stores and restaurants on both sides of Sangani Boulevard.
The purchase price for the 32,600 square-foot multi-tenant shopping center is $7.6 million, the company said.
Tom Hahn, president of Prudent Growth Partners, said the company is excited about another purchase in Mississippi and confident about the center’s performance with Walmart and Lowes in the mix.
“It is a great purchase for our investors and a nice addition to our portfolio,” he said.
Prudent Growth Partners focuses on properties that tend to be overlooked by larger institutions.The company said the D’Iberville shopping center is almost fully occupied and has “a diverse e-commerce resistant base of tenants and a desirable, high-traffic location.”
Retail has been a priority of D’Iberville Mayor Rusty Quave and council members for the past 20 years.
“Shopping is huge for D’Iberville,” said City Manager Bobby Weaver. The sales tax revenue from the Lakeview retail, The Promenade shopping and dining complex, plus several car dealerships are a big percentage of the city’s yearly budget, he said.
That share continues to grow. Last year it was about 10.7% of the budget — “a record” — and up from about 10.3% the previous year. The sales tax diversion from the state to D’Iberville is the third largest of the 12 Coast cities, after much larger Gulfport and Biloxi. It grew to $908,000 in fiscal year 2023 that ended in June, up from $867,750 in 2022.
Construction of the Lakeview shopping area in D’Iberville turned an open field in the early 2000s into “one of South Mississippi’s hottest retail areas, thanks to interstate access, a nearby residential boom, and the magic touch of Dr. Bharat Sangani, a Gulfport cardiologist and successful real estate developer whose master plan has created a thriving commercial corridor that’s still growing,” according to an article in the Sun Herald.
The shopping center was built around a 16-acre man-made lake, dug in the 1970s to provide dirt to build the Interstate 10 overpasses. Since then, most of the lake was filled for more commercial building sites.
Quave and the city council helped the area expand by issuing a series of TIF, or tax increment financing bonds, to help developers pay for infrastructure work. Millions of dollars in bonds were repaid with the additional sales tax revenue created by the new stores.
The shopping centers brought heavy traffic to D’Iberville, which resulted in the complete redesign of the I-10 and I-110 intersection.
This story was originally published October 16, 2023 at 3:48 PM.
