Jorge Perez and Related take control of OMNI Center

In the latest sign that downtown Miami is set to continue its ongoing transformation, the long-neglected Omni center has come under control of the developer behind the neighborhood’s last condo boom.

A group led by the Related Group purchased the Omni Center’s note for $100 million this week.

“We acquired the debt,” said Jimmy Tate of Tate Capital, which partnered with Related Group on the purchase. “We’re the lenders.”

The note has a principal balance of $161 million, and represents approximately 78 percent of the total senior mortgage balance of $206 million for the property, first opened in 1977.

Tate and Related Group’s CEO Jorge Perez declined to comment on plans for the complex, which includes 1.5 million square feet of office and retail space, as well as a 525-room Hilton hotel.

The complex sits on the east side of Biscayne Boulevard between N.E. 15th and 17th streets, just north of the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts and the MacArthur and Venetian causeways.

The property has languished for years since its 1980s heyday as a popular shopping mall, with plans for condos, offices, restaurants and a telecom hub all failing to materialize over the past decade.

Currently, it houses the Miami International University of Art & Design, the federal government’s General Services Administration Passport Control and Diplomatic Security Service offices , and thousands of square feet of empty retail and office space. The Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce is a long-term tenant there.

Perez appears to be making large bets on the return of the South Florida real estate market, which earned him a spot on Forbes’ list of richest Americans before handing him $1 billion in losses during the most recent downturn.

Related has plans to break ground on new condo buildings in Brickell and Hollywood, and is pursuing other deals throughout the region.

A deep dredging project will allow for larger cargo ships at the port of Miami and a new tunnel at the port is expected to accommodate additional shipping trucks by 2014. The Florida Marlins’ new $500 million baseball stadium will be operational next year, and the new Museum Park complex is expected to be completed by 2014. A Publix at Biscayne Blvd. and 18th Street is scheduled to open next year, and plans for a downtown Whole Foods grocery store have been announced as well.

A $700 million mixed-used development called Brickell Citicentre is set to break ground this year, and the Design District is poised for a multimillion-dollar makeover led by developer Craig Robins, who wants to model the area after New York’s Soho neighborhood.

By: TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/05/17/2221382/jorge-perez-partners-take-control.html#ixzz1NIwOd04e

New Publix offers a spark for downtown Miami’s Omni area

 

 An opportunity to solidify its dominance and establish another foothold in an increasingly competitive and residentially dense market drove Publix Super Markets to open its first store in the emerging Omni area of downtown Miami.

 

 

Construction is now under way on the 49,200-square-foot market at Northeast 17th Street and Biscayne Boulevard, one block north of the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. Fort Lauderdale-based Stiles Corp. is building the three-story, urban-format Publix, which features two floors of parking atop the supermarket.

The store is slated to open early next year.

Plans call for a café, including a walk-up window, and a pharmacy. There will also be 8,000 square feet of ancillary retail space as part of the Publix-anchored 18Biscayne shopping center on the 1.91-acre site, which was originally approved for a condo tower.

“The store will be a traditional Publix with a healthy selection of natural and organic, as well as Hispanic, products,” said Kim Jaeger, media and community relations manager for Publix.

Despite the significant downtown population growth in the past five years, Publix is the first supermarket to plant its flag in this area. Whole Foods Market has signed a lease to open at Metropolitan Miami, but construction on the ground-floor parking garage that will be underneath the store has yet to begin.

Publix’s move comes as new competitors, including Wal-Mart’s Neighborhood Market, are streaming into the market, and Target, which has a store just north of the downtown area, has added a grocery to its offerings.

Read more: New Publix offers a spark for downtown Miami’s Omni area | South Florida Business Journal

Kiosk culture is thriving at the malls

You've every intention of hitting up that Nordstrom sale at the mall but are sidetracked by cute yoga pants and a little black slip dress that both shapes and contours. But the clothes aren't in a store — they're hanging on a cart outside the stores.

Welcome to Maidenform's Shaper Shop kiosk, just one of the many mini-stores dotting the mall's interior. And the expanding kiosk market now includes everything from shapewear to $20 sheets, sunglasses to language-learning software and Crocs to socks.

Born in Boston's Faneuil Hall Marketplace in 1976, the kiosk concept has grown into a $12 billion specialty retail industry, said Poornima Apte, editor in chief of Specialty Retail Report. And IBISWorld research indicates that sales from kiosks increased from $975.9 million in 2006 to an estimated $2.07 billion in 2011, according to analyst Janet Shim.

Apte said the kiosks can provide an entrepreneur a way to test new retail concepts. "It can be temporary, doesn't require too much capital investment, and merchandise can be rotated quickly and effectively."

What’s next

The top five kiosk concepts for 2011, according to Specialty Retail Report:
1. Portable device accessories
2. Service delivery (i.e., threading stations)
3. DIY concepts (i.e., beading stations)
4. Electronic cigarettes
5. New takes on toys and plush

"This format pulls the products together in a focused way," said Lisa McClelland, vice president of retail for Maidenform. "Retail has evolved as to how the customer shops and this allows us to easily change inventory or location."

An art and a science, the placement of a kiosk is a delicate balance of maximizing a vendor's visibility and minimizing disruption to store-based retailers.

"Because mall kiosks are merchandised beautifully, they attract consumers to come check them out," Apte said. Demonstration concepts like toy helicopters also cater to customers' attention spans. "Many of the products sold through this market have a price point that makes them especially attractive as impulse buys."BY ELLEN WILKOWE

From: NJ Shopping.com: Kiosks a Thriving Business

Boynton Beach Mall for sale

Simon Property Group has placed the Boynton Beach Mall on the chopping block, making it the second mall in Palm Beach County to be listed in less than two years.

The Palm Beach Post notes that the 26-year-old mall, on the west side of Congress Avenue, was bustling until new stores grew around it in recent years. What was once cow pasture on the east side of Congress Avenue is now homes, restaurants and stores including SuperTarget and Best Buy.

Real estate experts told the Post that the mall site could be redeveloped into medical offices or a senior living facility. The property includes 83 acres between Gateway and Boynton Beach boulevards.
There is no purchase price attached to the site, which faces challenges due to the fact that there are multiple owners.

In addition to Simon Property Group, retailers including Macy’s are also owners.
Indianapolis-based Simon closed the Palm Beach Mall in 2010.

Read more: Boynton Beach Mall for sale | South Florida Business Journal

Louis Vuitton moving to Aventura

Louis Vuitton is leaving the Bal Harbour Shops when its lease expires at the end of June, and opening up at Aventura Mall on July 1st.

The French luxury label will take temporary space there until it opens a larger store “adhering in design to the Maison’s very latest global store concept,” which the company said is scheduled to open in fall 2012.

“We are delighted to be bringing our Miami home to Aventura,” said Geoffroy Van Raemdonck, president of Louis Vuitton North America, in a news release. “Louis Vuitton has been an established presence in the region for several decades, and we felt it was time we were able to respond to the evolving needs of our customers by offering them a significantly enhanced environment.”

The temporary Aventura Mall location will feature a space dedicated to a rotation of work by renowned artists.
Louis Vuitton has six other South Florida locations, as well as stores in Naples, Tampa and Jacksonville.
The company also has plans to open a new store in the Miami Design District, according to several published reports.

Read more: Louis Vuitton moving to Aventura | South Florida Business Journal

Hispanic Supermarket Sabor Expanding

President Supermarket is out, and Sabor Tropical Supermarket is moving in at Miami’s Biscayne Plaza.

The Hispanic supermarket chain, which has four other stores, has signed a 20-year lease for 24,000 square feet at the Biscayne Plaza Shopping Center. The deal is valued at $2.4 million.

 

Another store, at 5011 Broadway in West Palm Beach, is undergoing renovations, according to owner Rafael Castro.

As part of the deal, Sabor Tropical has to renovate the interior no later than January 2012, according to a news release from Terranova Corp., whose Executive VP Mindy McIlroy brokered the deal.

The store is open, and renovations will take place in the evenings while the store is closed.

Castro said he opened his first store four years ago and has been expanding with new ones. He said there’s a lot of work to be done at his newest location, but he’s planning to do it “little by little.”

There will be a seamless transition between President and Sabor Tropical, so there will be no impact to the community,” McIlroy said in a news release. “This is the first step in the right direction for the redevelopment of this community shopping center.”

By: Susan R. Miller

From: Sabor Tropical adds Biscayne Plaza store | South Florida Business Journal

Terranova group buys slice of Lincoln Road

Terranova Corp., in a joint venture with Acadia Realty Trust (NYSE: AKR), has snapped up three buildings along Lincoln Road for $52 million.

The seller was an entity controlled by developer Craig Robins.

The 61,000-square-foot slice of Miami Beach’s most popular shopping and entertainment strip include tenants such as Starbucks Coffee, Geox Shoes, and restaurants Sushi Samba Dromo and Tacontento. There is also 12,000 square feet of offices available for lease above the restaurants, for those who want to people-watch while they work. Miami-Beach-based Terranova will oversee leasing and management.

Lincoln Road, which spans eight blocks between Alton Road and Washington Avenue, is the priciest retail district in South Florida. With average rents of $140 a square foot, it far outpaces rents along Palm Beach’s posh Worth Avenue, where average rents are $95 a foot, according to Cushman & Wakefield market data.

Even so, the price tag for the three-building portfolio might seem aggressive to some retail experts, considering that not all the retail space fronts on Lincoln Road. One of the buildings is at 723 N. Lincoln Lane.

“It is probably a good buy and probably a good sell,” said Greg Masin, senior director with Cushman & Wakefield. “It allows the buyer to become a material landlord in what is the most compelling market in South Florida. This is not a T.J.Maxx buy. This is a Nordstrom full-retail buy.”

Terranova Chairman Stephen Bittel wasn’t immediately available to comment, but had this to say in a statement:

“The three-property Lincoln Road acquisition greatly enhances our fashion-forward, street-front retail product. Terranova now has a 61,000-sqaure-foot presence on Lincoln Road, once known as the Fifth Avenue of the South, and we will expand that moniker to Lincoln Lane, as local and national tenants clamor for retail space as buyers make their return to Miami Beach.”

By: Darcie Lunsford, Real Estate Editor
Read more: Terranova group buys slice of Lincoln Road | South Florida Business Journal

New South Beach Garage: Architectural Landmark

For her wedding over the weekend, Nina Johnson had worked through a predictable checklist of locations in town: hotel ballrooms, restaurant halls and catering outfits. She ended up going with "cinematic and absolutely dramatic!", as Nina's family and friends gathered for her hip and well decorated wedding cerimony at the top floor of South Beach's new $65M garage, overlooking the Miami Donwtown skyline and having the Atlantic Ocean as their background.

Created by a colorful Miami developer and a world-renowned architecture firm, it appears to be an entirely new form: a piece of carchitecture that resembles a gigantic loft apartment, with exaggerated ceiling heights, wide-open 360-degree views and no exterior walls.

The garage has an unlikely back story. Its developer, a contemporary art collector named Robert Wennett, bought the property in 2005, inheriting a drab-looking bank office and an unremarkable parking lot at the corner of two well-known boulevards, Lincoln and Alton Roads.

Quirky zoning regulations in the city, which is chronically short on parking, made it profitable to build a large garage — not everyone’s vision of a grand gateway to the retail and restaurant-filled streets that surround the site.

Mr. Wennett, who sprinkles his properties with $1 million Dan Graham sculptures and admits that he hates most of the garages he has ever parked in, aimed high, interviewing 10 top architects around the world. He settled on Herzog & de Meuron, a Swiss firm best known for transforming a power station into the Tate Modern gallery in London and designing the Olympic stadium in Beijing (known, by its appearance, as the Bird’s Nest).

What they produced, in early 2010, was all those things: a garage with floor heights of up to 34 feet, three times the norm; a striking internal staircase, with artwork embedded in its base; precarious looking (and feeling) ledges that rely on industrial-strength cable to hold back cars and people; and a glass cube that houses a designer clothing store, perhaps the first in the middle of a parking garage. Another interesting fact that even most local aren't aware of, is that Mr. Wennett built himself a large penthouse apartment on the roof.

In a final flourish, the architects created a soaring top floor that doubles as an event space, with removable parking barriers. It can be rented for about $12,000 to $15,000 a night.

“This is not a parking garage,” Mr. Wennett said. “It’s really a civic space.”

Not all the reviews are fawning. In interviews, several Miami drivers grumbled about the cost of parking in the garage — typically $4 an hour, depending on the time of day, compared with about $1 an hour in nearby municipal lots.

However, most visitors seem to overlook that: “I wouldn’t even think of parking anywhere else when I’m downtown,” said Douglas Sharon, a financial adviser, who steers his gray Ferrari into the garage several times a week.

By: Michael Barbaro

From: NY Times: A Miami Beach Event Space. Parking Space, Too.

City Furniture opens its first LEED store in Boca Raton

New York City -- Home furnishings retailer City Furniture has opened its first store built to LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards. The 93,680-sq.-ft. location, in Boca Raton, Fla., houses a City Furniture and Ashley Furniture HomeStore under one roof.

The store has dual-flush toilets, low-flow urinals and a landscape irrigation system, and is expected to use 42% less water for interior use and 78% less outside than a traditional store. Walls are paneled with reclaimed wood. Design features include walls paneled with reclaimed wood and natural stone feature walls.

From: City Furniture opens store built to LEED standards

Dillard's plans to form Real Estate Investment Trust

In a regulatory filing on Wednesday Dillard's said it plans to form a real estate investment trust, with the objective of improving liquidity.

 

According to the department store retailer, various company entities will transfer interests in properties to the REIT, which will then lease the properties back to them.

"Dillard's believes the formation of a REIT may enhance its ability to access debt or preferred stock and thereby enhance its liquidity," the filing said.

Dillard's also said it had formed a captive insurance company, a wholly owned unit intended to allow the retailer to more efficiently manage its risks and open access to more reinsurance markets.

From: Dillards plans to form REIT