Capitalizing on what will likely be a strong year for retail, Clarion Partners has acquired a 187,000-square-foot shopping center in Covington, Wash., for $31 million.

Omninet Capital has closed on the purchase of Commerce Office Park, a 285,368-square-foot institutional-quality office campus at South Eastern and East Slauson avenues in Commerce, Calif.

The Internal Revenue Service, acting through Government Properties Income Trust, just signed a 10-year, 531,976-square-foot lease renewal in Fresno, Calif.

Acting on behalf of AIG, Holliday Fenoglio Fowler has obtained a $56 million loan for Sterling Collwood, a premier student-housing property near San Diego State University.

In what is being described as Orange County, Calif.’s largest industrial consideration of 2011, Menlo Equities snapped up the Irvine Crossings project, a 420,000-square-foot property, for $47 million.

Financing to the tune of $155.3 million has been put in place for a 2,184-unit apartment portfolio in metropolitan Seattle by CBRE on behalf of owners Holland Partner Group and Invesco.

Monarch at Shadowridge, a 314-residence apartment community has changed hands in what Jones Lang LaSalle Capital Markets, the real estate services firm that represented the seller, describes as the one and only trade of a Class A apartment property in San Diego County in 2011.

The Swig Co. has just added a downtown Los Angeles office building to its portfolio with the acquisition of 617 W. 7th St. from a joint venture sponsored by Alliance Commercial Partners.

Vestar is taking on a new 1.1 million-square-foot responsibility, now that it has won the third-party contract to spearhead management of Buena Park Downtown, a retail complex in Buena Park, Calif.

From coast to coast, retail transactions are closing one after the other. Among the grocery-anchored assets involved in the first deals of 2012 are the 50,600-square-foot Jenkins Row Retail in Washington, D.C., and the 130,800-square-foot Canyon Park Place in suburban Seattle.