Portion of this longtime Peoria shopping center is going up for auction

A mostly-empty portion of the Evergreen Square shopping center will be put up for auction next month, as new tenants are sought to join Dollar Tree and H&R Block at the facility.

The auction, led by Michigan-based commercial firm Friedman Real Estate, will be held May 6 to 8 and will include an 81,000-square-foot portion of the shopping center that is only 16% occupied at the moment. Crexi, an online auction site, will host the auction, with an initial bid set at $500,000.

Friedman's listing for the site says that 67,000 square feet of the property is available for immediate leasing, with opportunities for retail, office space, auto repair, education and mixed-use vendors. In addition, opportunities also exist for potential redevelopment for a prospective buyer.

Very few tenants currently have space in this portion of the shopping center, which sits adjacent to a Kroger grocery store, a newly-opened CubeSmart Self-Storage facility and an Oak Street Health Clinic, none of which is included with the prospective sale. Dollar Tree and H&R Block are the only major national tenants after businesses such as Petco left for the Westlake Shopping Center and T.J. Maxx moved to the Glen Hollow Shopping Center.

The first stores in Evergreen Square opened in 1983, with full completion of the site coming by 1985. The current owners of the site for sale are Rialto Capitol Advisors, a Miami-based LLC, who purchased the site from a suburban Chicago LLC in 2022.