A national investment analysis uses Danada Square West, the 314,819-square-foot shopping center at Butterfield and Naperville roads, as a case study for why investors are paying premiums for grocery-anchored retail properties.
The Commercial Search analysis, published Oct. 23, examined store performance, lease terms and replacement strategies at grocery-anchored centers. It cited the Wheaton property's long-running Jewel-Osco anchor as a factor that reinforced the investment case.
DLC Management Corp., a firm that owns and operates open-air shopping centers nationally, purchased Danada Square West for $61.7 million in a joint venture with Crow Holdings Capital and Temerity Strategic Partners. The October 2026 analysis described the deal as a "late-2024 acquisition," while a separate Commercial Search report from January 2025 placed the purchase "earlier this month." The exact closing date is unclear from the two accounts.
Jewel-Osco has anchored the property since it opened in 1988. The grocer's Chicago-market position and the individual store's performance were central to DLC's assessment, according to the October analysis.
"Retail real estate, especially grocery-anchored real estate, is still local," DLC Chief Operating Officer Chris Ressa said in the analysis.
The center's tenant roster also includes TJ Maxx, HomeGoods, Burlington, The Paper Store, Ulta and Five Below, according to the January 2025 report. At the January 2025 closing, the property was 92.7 percent leased, with roughly 23,000 square feet vacant and letters of intent under review.
DLC secured $41.7 million in acquisition financing from Webster Bank, with JLL arranging the loan, the January 2025 report stated.
The national analysis placed the Wheaton property within a broader investor trend. In JLL's 2026 retail investors survey, 81 percent of respondents included grocery-anchored centers in their investment plans. Transaction volume for grocery-anchored properties reached nearly $11 billion in 2025, up 42 percent year-over-year, according to JLL's Grocery Tracker.
The picture is not uniform. Jim Hamilton, senior managing director with JLL Capital Markets, said in the analysis that buyer demand exceeds available inventory, contributing to meaningful valuation increases over the past year. Still, most grocery-anchored assets continue to trade below replacement cost, Hamilton said.
Consumer preferences are splitting traffic among traditional, value-oriented and fresh-format grocers, the analysis noted, and individual stores can perform differently even within the same chain. At Danada Square West, letters of intent for the remaining vacant space were under review as of the January 2025 financing report.
