RCA in the commercial property press:

Texas-Size Deal Boasts Strong Dallas Roots

The Wall Street Journal reports: Highland Park Village, a landmark Spanish Mediterranean-style shopping center near downtown Dallas, was recently purchased for about $170 million by a legendary oil family, in one of the priciest retail-property sales in Dallas in recent years.

The names of the buyers and sellers of the posh 250,000-square-foot center, viewed by some as Dallas's answer to Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, read like a page out of a social register. The buyer was a partnership including Ray Washburne and his wife and sister-in-law, both great-granddaughters of oil tycoon and wildcatter H.L. Hunt. Mr. Washburne, chief executive of Dallas real-estate firm Charter Holdings, also is the great-grandson of Hempstead Washburne, a mayor of Chicago in the 1890s. Moreover, the seller was a joint venture operated by Henry S. Miller Interests, comprised of members of a prominent Dallas-area real-estate family and some other individuals. The sellers had owned the property since 1976, when they paid about $5 million for it.

Highland Park Village is something of a benchmark sale for Dallas and the nation. While a handful of properties have sold for a higher price per square foot elsewhere in the U.S. this year, no single U.S. retail property has sold for a higher total price, according to Real Capital Analytics, a New York real-estate firm. In addition, the roughly $680 price per square foot that it fetched is the highest per-square-foot price paid for retail in the Dallas region since Real Capital first began keeping records in 2001.