Park Place shopping center sells for $10.5 million

PERKINS TWP. — Park Place Plaza Shopping Center sold to a Medina-based real estate company.The Milan Road (U.S. 250) shopping center, which contains Lowe's and Staples, sold to R.G. Nieto Co. Real Estate for $10.5 million, according to the Erie County auditor's website. The company owns several shopping centers in Ohio."Our business is purchasing shopping centers. We have been doing that for over 40 years," said Robert Nieto, the company's founder and a licensed real estate broker.Park Place has lost many of its tenants in recent years with the closure of stores like Dunham's Sports and Creative Teaching, but it still has prominent tenants to drive traffic to the shopping center like Lowe's, Staples and Pelz Lettering Shirt Shack, which recently relocated there."We liked this property because of its location, and it has good anchor stores," Nieto said. "We're aware that there are several vacancies, but we believe we can fill those."Nieto said there are no concrete plans to update the exterior at this time, but they will likely pump money into renovating the interior and work with interested tenants to make it fit their needs.Park Place Plaza opened in 1990 after Sandusky Center Partners invested about $40 million to build the shopping center, according to a 1990 Sandusky Register article.Hoty Enterprises will no longer manage the property for the new owners as it did for the prior ownership, company president John Hoty said. But he said the old Cinemark movie theater near Park Place is still up for sale.The purchase doesn't include Wal-Mart, which owns the land it's built on, or the old Toys R Us which sold for $1 million to a separate company last week.Reach reporter Michael Harrington at michaelharrington@sanduskyregister.com, follow the Register at Facebook.com/SanduskyRegisterPark Place Plaza on Milan Road sold to a Medina-based real estate company early this month for $10.5 million.