Sellers squeeze gain out of pricey St. Paul Walgreens.

Byline: Matt M. Johnson

A St. Paul Walgreens store purchased one year ago in the most expensive deal ever for one of the retailer's Minnesota locations has sold again for even more money.

A Trabuco Canyon, California, investor, WBA Properties LLC, paid $17.25 million for the 16,890-square-foot store at 2099 Ford Parkway, according to a certificate of real estate value made public on Wednesday. WBA is owned by a family trust, said Joseph Myer, an investor who controls the trust.

The seller, a group lead by Wilson, Wyoming-based investor Darrick Walker, paid nearly $15.97 million for the store in May 2018. At the time, the price was the highest ever paid for a Walgreens in the state, according to Finance & Commerce archives. Prior to that sale, the store sold in 2012 for $13.95 million.

The deal, which closed on April 22, works out to $1,021 per square foot of space. Ramsey County values the property at $3.3 million for tax purposes.

The 8-year-old Walgreens is near the northwest corner of the Ford Parkway and Cleveland Avenue, and is across the street from the 122-acre former site of a Ford Motor Co. truck assembly plant. That site is being redeveloped by Minneapolis-based Ryan Cos. US Inc. The developer has proposed the construction of 3,800 housing units, 150,000 square feet of retail and 265,000 square feet of office and employment space. Thirty-five single-family homes might also be built. The project would cost about $1.3 billion.

WBA Properties purchased the Walgreens in an off-market transaction as a 1031 exchange with a West Virginia distribution facility the trust sold recently, Myer said in a Thursday interview. The Walgreens was worth the latest purchase price because the building has a high-credit tenant with a long lease, and because the property generates...