Passco Acquires KY Apartments for $62M

The Henry at Fritz Farm

Passco Cos, has acquired The Henry at Fritz Farm, a 306-unit, Class A+ apartment community in Lexington, Ky., from the Dobbins Group, for $62.4 million.

“The Henry at Fritz Farm is situated in one of the region’s top entertainment and retail districts, which is an exceptional example of a mixed-use, master planned community and unlike anything else in the area,” Colin Gillis, Passco’s vice president of acquisitions, told Multi-Housing News. “We have been successful in acquiring irreplaceable assets, with little-to-no competition with top-tier on-site demographics in the growing secondary markets in Southeast. We believe Lexington’s continued population growth and healthy, increasingly diversified economy will position The Henry at Fritz Farm to thrive for the long term.”

Built two years ago, the property offers a mix of one-, two- and three-bedroom units with open-concept floorplans, 9-foot ceilings, plank flooring and oversized windows.

Amenities include a saline swimming pool with oversized sundeck and poolside fire pits, a clubroom with a coffee bar, a pet spa and a business center.

The Bigger Picture

The community is part of The Summit at Fritz Farm, a walkable, mixed-use, master-planned community that consists of more than 280,000 square feet of retail with a mix of local, regional and national tenants. Among the tenants are Whole Foods, William Sonoma, Pottery Barn, lululemon and Anthropologie. 

Developed by Bayer Properties, the Summit also includes 20 restaurants, such as J Alexanders, The Barn and Shake Shack. There’s also a soon-to-be-open 120-room upscale Origin Hotel and a high-end office component.

According to Gillis, the company has seen success over the last few years employing the strategy of finding unique, irreplaceable assets with exceptional demographics and little-to-no competition in the secondary markets of the Southeast.

“We find that that properties as unique as The Henry with a top-tier resident profile often perform exceptionally better than their primary-market peers,” he said.

Lexington is a city on the rise and is seeing a great deal of new business and development coming to the area.

“The metro’s economy has traditionally been led by healthcare and tourism; however, the strong job and population growth have begun to attract big-name Fortune 500 companies including Amazon and Xerox,” Gillis said. “Among the top employers in the region are the University of Kentucky, Toyota, Amazon, Lexmark International, and Lockheed Martin.”

Cushman & Wakefield’s Kentucky team of Mike Kemether and Craig Collins are marketing The Henry.

In November, Passco Cos. acquired a Class A, 288-unit apartment community in Destin, Fla. for $63.3 million from Atlanta-based Catalyst Development Partners.

Image courtesy of Passco Cos.