Shopping plaza deal inked for $5.1M

Cromwell site sold by Greenwich-based real estate firm to Cheshire company

CROMWELL — A 57,000 square foot shopping center on Shunpike Road has been sold for $5.1 million, according to the commercial real estate firm that brokered the deal.

Crossroads Plaza, which is located at 34 Shunpike Road in Cromwell, was sold by Greenwich-based Pilot Real Estate Group to a Cheshire-based limited liability company, Mihel II, according to records on the town’s tax assessor’s office.

The previous owner of Crossroads Plaza is Greenwich-based Pilot Real Estate Group, according to town records. The plaza, which was built in 1988, is on a 14.7 acre site. According to Stuart Popper, the town’s director of planning and development, more than half the site is on wetlands.

The plaza is 80 percent occupied with 15 tenants, including the Middlesex County location of Restore-Habitat for Humanity, AAA and Benjamin Moore.

Phil Gagnon, the commercial Realtor with the Hartford office of Colliers International who brokered the deal, said in a statement that the new owner plans significant upgrades to the Crossroads Plaza, including a new façade, signage and visibility improvements to help attract new businesses.

Popper offered several examples of how Cromwell is seeing a steady stream of new businesses coming into town.

One pre-pandemic example, he said, was the opening of a new 67,000-square-foot ShopRite grocery store in a location at 45

Shunpike Road.

More recently, a new Springhill Suites Hotel opened in September at 76 Berlin Road. And a new Starbucks opened in February in the Cromwell Commons at 136 Berlin Road, according to Popper.

“We’re very thankful that even during the COVID-19 pandemic, people are investing in bringing new businesses into town,” he said.

David Sacco, a practitioner in residence at the University of

New Haven’s Pompea College of Business, said a variety of factors are driving investors’ interest in commercial retail property in the midst of the pandemic.

“There is a lot of money being made in real estate transactions of all types right now in Connecticut,” Sacco said. “There is portion of the tax code where in investors can defer the tax consequences of their real estate profits if they invest in other real estate.”

The influx of people relocating to Connecticut from out-of-state is also driving the increase in the retail property sales activity, he said.