Alexander & Baldwin Inc. has purchased the Gentry Waipi'o Shopping Center from a Chicago-based investment firm that acquired the 14-acre site four years ago.

The Honolulu-based real estate, agriculture and shipping company yesterday confirmed the deal and said more details would be available next week. Although no purchase price was available yesterday, it is thought the center sold for around the $30 million paid by an affiliate of Jones Lang LaSalle in August 2005.

The purchase is the latest in a string of transactions for A&B's property division, which unlike some other real estate investors has been active in buying and selling commercial properties this year. Last week, the company acquired two distribution warehouses in Fullerton, Calif., and in June sold Hawaii Business Park in Pearl City.

"Transactions are still going on and investors still have an appetite to buy good product," said Joe Leonardo of Joseph C. Leonardo and Co., which brokered the Gentry Waipi'o transaction. Leonardo had represented LaSalle in the 2005 purchase.

"There's still some money out there."

Leonardo would not discuss the A&B transaction aside from saying the property represented a good opportunity.

The shopping center was built almost a quarter century ago to serve the roughly 3,500 homes developed by Gentry between Mililani and Waipahu. The shopping center off Kamehameha Highway consists of a series of buildings, with Foodland being the anchor tenant.

The 113,000-square-foot center houses A Calvary Chapel sanctuary and school, Outback Steak House, American Savings Bank, Big City Diner and small medical office buildings.

Other tenants in the nearly 100 percent leased center include an L&L Drive Inn, Aloha gasoline station, and Jack in the Box.

The purchase is also A&B's second in Waipi'o this year, having purchased a five-building distribution and service center on 6.7 acres within the Gentry Business Park in March. In other transactions in 2009, the Honolulu-based company bought a 252,000 square-foot distribution center in San Diego, and sold an office building in Phoenix and a parcel in a Kahului industrial park.

The company's real estate portfolio consists of about 8.5 million square feet of retail, office and industrial space in Hawai'i and eight Mainland states.