In a $57.5 million transaction, Summit Development L.L.C. sold a rehabilitated Superfund site now the home of Fairfield”™s Whole Foods market.
The buyer was Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association-College Retirement Equities Fund, or TIAA-CREF, a New York City-based financial company with assets totaling $441 billion as of September.
For $8 million in 2003, Summit Development CEO Felix Charney bought the real estate that would become King”™s Crossing, in partnership with the Westport-based developer Greenfield Partners.
Besides Whole Foods, which has supported several local vendors including Norwalk-based Yumnuts and Westport-based Kerry Wood Healthy Foods, King”™s Crossing tenants today include CVS, Petco, Chipotle and Five Guys Burgers and Fries.
The Grasmere Avenue site was owned by a predecessor company to what today is Handy & Harman Ltd., a White Plains, N.Y.-based alloy and tubing manufacturer with revenue of $581 million in 2010.
In recent years, Summit Development has been best known for buying the Reader”™s Digest complex in Westchester County, N.Y., now named Chappaqua Crossing, with Summit suing over zoning requirements. Summit is currently razing the former Stamford Advocate offices at 75 Tresser Boulevard in Stamford to build an apartment complex at the site, and also owns the Belden Square building in Norwalk that once served as Virgin Atlantic Airways main U.S. office.
In a brief interview at deadline, Charney said he expects to file plans within the next few months on a residential project in Fairfield County for 100 units of rental housing, without providing further details.
Asked if he would do King”™s Crossing again given other opportunities that may have since crossed his desk, Charney said yes.
“I think when something is finished you forget how difficult and winding the road was. That in mind, the answer is yes ”¦ Every project you are undertaking in Fairfield County, you are ”¦ reclaiming land. The challenges in this county are significant. Zoning is clearly one of them, but the rewards are great.
In a press release, Fairfield”™s director of community and economic development called the project an “overwhelming success” from the town”™s perspective.
“What had been an abandoned property is now the cornerstone for the redevelopment of an entire area of the town,” said Mark Barnhart, the town”™s economic director. “The Commerce Drive neighborhood is an up and coming area with a great future.”
