Principal Real Estate Investors, the fifth-largest manager of real estate in the United States, said it purchased a prominent shopping center in Central New Jersey, betting on continued growth in retail spending in one of the nation’s most densely populated areas.

Principal said its joint venture with Washington, D.C.-based Madison Marquette, has purchased MarketFair, a 240,000-square-foot single-story mall located in West Windsor, N.J., less than 5 miles outside Princeton. Financial details of the transaction were not released.

The mall’s tenants include such popular retailers as Pottery Barn, Williams Sonoma, Anthropologie and Smith & Hawken. Barnes & Noble and a United Artists movie theater anchor the mall, where sales average more than $400 per square foot.

MarketFair is located along U.S. Highway Route 1, one of the busiest commercial thoroughfares in the nation. It’s less than 55 miles from both Philadelphia and New York City. The area surrounding MarketFair is also home to such companies as Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., Johnson & Johnson Inc., Educational Testing Service, Dow Jones & Co. and Merrill Lynch & Co.

The mall is 98 percent occupied, and in a statement released via PR Newswire, Tom Falatko, Madison Marquette’s vice president of acquisitions, said there was opportunity to further strengthen the facility’s roster of tenants.

Madison Marquette, an affiliate of Capital Guidance Corp., a global investment firm, oversees more than 28 million square feet across the country, including Manhattan Beach, Calif.’s Manhattan Village and The Bell Tower Shops at Fort Myers, Fla.

Principal Real Estate Investors, a subsidiary of Principal Financial Group Inc., owns or manages more than $24 billion in commercial real estate assets.