Jon Hendrickson said the shopping center he just helped sell received “record-setting” activity for his team.

“It got eyes from pretty much all profiles of shopping center buyers,” the broker with Cushman & Wakefield said.

But a local group operating as Virginia Village Owner LLC won out with its plan to renovate and reimagine the space. It snapped up the roughly 5-acre shopping center for nearly $13 million last week.

The 50,000-square-foot retail property is situated on the northwest corner of Holly Street and Florida Avenue in the center of Denver’s Virginia Village neighborhood. It was sold by another locally based partnership that’s owned it for “40-plus years,” said Hendrickson, who marketed it with colleagues Aaron Johnson and Mitch Veremeychik.

Warren Cohen, of Denver developer D4 Urban, signed the paperwork on behalf of the seller.

The new owners plan a new 10,000-square-foot courtyard with a fire pit and children’s play areas, along with a 700-square-foot retail building. They also are working to divide a vacant 7,600-square-foot Family Dollar into smaller retail spaces.

The property is about 20 percent vacant. Current operators onsite include an Ace Hardware, pizza joint, kid’s gym, hair salon and swimming school.

“The courtyard is the secret sauce. It’s going to bring a lot of energy to the center. … There’s not a lot of retail in the immediate neighborhood,” said Todd Snyder, a broker with Kentwood Commercial who is working with the new ownership.

Snyder said work on the seven-figure renovations could begin early next year. In the meantime, he’s working to lock down more leases and get more food and beverage operators to Virginia Village.

He recently signed on a taqueria, is in discussions with a butcher and is talking with a “well known yoga studio” and a restaurant that would serve lunch and dinner with a full bar.

“It’s an untapped asset that we hope to bring to its full potential and be a neighborhood gathering place for the Virginia Village community,” Snyder said.

The new owners will look to a Park Hill retail hub as the model.

Before launching their play into Virginia Village, the ownership group recently turned around Oneida Park, on both sides of Oneida Street between 22nd and 23rd Avenues, Snyder said. It also installed a courtyard and brought in an ice cream operator.

“We’re going for local,” Snyder said. “We’re going for affordable and family friendly.”

— Matt Geiger, BusinessDen