Photo courtesy of Urban Edge Properties

A publicly-traded REIT acquired Framingham’s Shopper’s World and Everett’s Gateway Center, a pair of open-air shopping centers spanning nearly 1.4 million square feet, for $309 million.

New York-based Urban Edge Properties said the acquisitions “support the company’s strategy of acquiring high-quality retail real estate with future growth potential while providing us with critical mass in the Boston market.”

Spanning 89 acres along the Mystic River, the 639,000-square-foot Everett property was originally developed in 2001 and is anchored by Target, Costco and Home Depot.

The 98-acre Shopper’s World was originally developed in 1951 as one of the nation’s first shopping malls, and redeveloped in the early 1990s as a 758,000-square-foot open-air shopping center. Current major tenants include Best Buy, Nordstrom Rack, T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, HomeSense and Sierra Trading Post.

The seller was Site Centers, an Ohio-based retail REIT.

Limited new retail development in Greater Boston has stabilized the local real estate market in the post-COVID environment, according to a 2023 market outlook report by Marcus & Millichap.

Developers have averaged 1.3 million square feet of construction in the past five years. Vacancy rates in late 2022 were 2.1 percent in Boston and 1.7 percent in the inner northern suburbs, the report said, and investors are targeting acquisitions in Middlesex and Essex counties because of limited availability and a small development pipeline.

Urban Edge Properties owns 76 properties totaling 17.2 million square feet along the Washington, D.C. to Boston corridor.