From left to right: Arthur J. Dichter, Partner; Grace C. Lopez, COO; Sarah B. Jacobson, Associate; Steven L. Cantor, Managing Partner; Kathryn von Matthiessen, Partner; Sharon Dresser, President High Street Retail ,USA; Paul J. D’Alessandro, Jr., Associate
The Cantor Group law firm has moved its Miami office from the Brickell Financial District to Coconut Grove.
Formerly known as Cantor & Webb, the international tax law firm signed a 10-year lease in the Biscayne Bank Tower at 2601 S. Bayshore Dr. The firm and its 25 or so employees will occupy a full floor spanning 14,411 square feet in the 22-story Class A office tower.
“We are thrilled to be in a location so readily accessible and convenient for our clients and employees,” said CEO Steven Cantor, who specializes in international tax and estate planning for high net-worth international clients. “Coconut Grove is what all of downtown Miami should have been—parks, pedestrian walkways, jogging paths, bike lands and of course great views of Biscayne Bay.”
Escaping the congested Brickell area, where parking is difficult, was an added bonus.
The lease was valued at about $7 million, a spokesman told the Daily Business Review. Leasing rates averaged $34 per square foot for Class A buildings in Coconut Grove during the second quarter, according to CBRE Inc.
Broward County records show Swope Properties LLC is the new owner of the 2.1-acre property at 1335 South Federal Highway. The 1031 exchange is managed by Patricia Swope of Louisville, Kentucky. Doug Aronson and Patrick Nutt of the Calkain Companies represented the buyer.A 1031 exchange paid $5.26 million for the newly built Cumberland Farms, Sharon Dresser, president of High Street Retail, told The Real Deal. Dresser and her partners paid $3.1 million for the property, formerly the site of Nielsen’s Furniture, more than a year ago.
Dresser said the partnership purchased the property in January 2015 after securing permits and the tenant, Cumberland Farms. They knocked down the existing building and turned it over to Cumberland Farms, which completed the new building in November. The seller, Federal & 13th LLC, subdivided the lots and kept 0.9 acres, which Dresser said is currently leased to a church.
Deerfield Beach has seen a flurry of new commercial and residential development. The Cumberland Farms store sits on the corner of South Federal Highway and Southeast 13th Court. “This was an overlooked corridor in Deerfield Beach,” she said in a press release. “You wouldn’t recognize the area compared to a few years ago. A lot of national tenants have opened including Chipotle, Whole Foods, Aldi and LA Fitness.”
MIAMI—One of the nation’s fastest-growing cities, Doral is attracting plenty of developers. CVS is the latest brand to take interest.
Hines hired High Street Retail to find a tenant for the corner of 87th and Doral Boulevard. High Street’s Sharon Dresser bought CVS to the table.
As she figured it, with so much housing coming online, CVS would be a good match for Doral Corporate Center. Developers broke ground on a 13,000-square-foot pharmacy with a drive through that will open in fall 2016.
“I’ve lived in Miami for 15 years and always take a creative and forward thinking approach,” says Dresser. “I know South Florida like the back of my hand and over time you get a sense of the development flow. My first project here was back in 2005 when I was helping to lease Doral Court. Even back then, I knew that at some point things here were going to explode.”
Explode is a good word. Downtown Doral has emerged as a hot market and Codina’s project is driving at least some of the momentum.
“Prior to the construction of Downtown Doral, the site was a decades-old suburban office park with vast fields of surface parking located directly across from the Trump National Doral Golf Resort and Spa,” Ana Codina-Barlick, CEO of the new Downtown Doral development. “We envisioned transforming this space into a vibrant urban core that would be the heart of this booming community with the amenities of a major metropolis in the comfort of a suburban neighborhood.”
Hines also hired High Street to market another commercial parcel, a 0.4 acre parcel in front of their 8800 Doral, a luxury 550-unit class A multifamily development next to Doral Corporate Center, the 278,000-square-foot class A office complex.
ORLANDO—Teal Henderson, a director at Calkain Companies, likes what she sees in the net lease market. Indeed, when it comes to capital flow, she tells GlobeSt.com the net lease asset market is still extremely active with Florida being at the top of the market lists.
Henderson is a speaker at the upcoming RealShare Central Florida event Sept. 7 in Orlando. She will take a seat on the State of Central Florida’s Capital Markets Panel.
“There is still a considerable delta between the inventory of quality net leased assets and the investors ready, able and seeking to buy,” Henderson says. “Assets with credit tenants are picked up immediately. Buyer brokers must act quickly to an asset being introduced to the open market or miss the opportunity to even submit an offer on it.”
From her perspective, more investors—both private and some public—are expanding their target parameters to include larger franchisee tenants, areas just outside major markets, and new concepts that were previously left off of their “will buy and actively seeking” lists. Cap rates, she shares, have held mostly flat for the last 10 months and for some tenants—read: Wawa, Chick-Fil-A, Applebee’s, CVS—and cap rates are continuing to compress a slow but consistent clip.
“Each set of sales are seeing the cap rates drop a few basis points,” Henderson says. “Cap rates for these top tenants are an average of 30 to 50 basis points less than they were in 2015. We have seen a marked increase in crossover and first time triple net buyers.”
“In the last six months there are first time net lease buyers coming from the agricultural and farming sectors as well as multifamily,” Henderson says. “Buyers who disposed of long held family farms are seeking more passive stable income and purchasing assets in the Southeast. Multifamily owners are diversifying their portfolio by adding some more stabilized income from net leased assets and mixed use urban retail developments. The traditional multifamily asset owners are adjusting ownership make up as housing markets are now focused on the Millennial generation combining the housing and retail lifestyles developments.”
What’s more, Henderson says, there is a consistent stream of international investor attention for the true net leased assets in Florida. She points to numerous South American investors seeking assets in Florida for US land ownership and stable income.
“Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and Colombia have grown in number of inquiries and purchases of net leased assets located in Florida markets where they vacation or own second homes,” Henderson says. “China continues to increase the number of educated and able buyers of US commercial real estate. Even in countries with unfavorable exchange rates or during economic instability, there is a commitment to purchasing US assets. In one specific recent listing I had in Tampa, the Brazilian investor was able to purchase a new construction triple net asset in Tampa for all cash during the instability of the country’s currency. It was purchased all cash but was immediately refinanced.”
Steady gains in the US economy have resulted in net positives for the multifamily sector—will this wave continue for the foreseeable future? What’s driving development and capital flows? Join us at RealShare Apartments on October 19 & 20 for impactful information from the leaders in the National multifamily space. Learn more.
If you are seeking an intelligent and hard-working team to locate the right tenants, look no further. I highly recommend you consider Sharon and the High Street Retail USA team. – Ned Siegel, The Siegal Group
