Seritage Growth Properties shed another South Florida Sears site, selling a shuttered store in Hialeah to Codina Partners.
Codina, led by the father-daughter team of Armando Codina and Ana-Marie Codina Barlick, paid $16.5 million for the 153,596-square-foot big box store at 1625 West 49th Street, according to a source familiar with the off-market deal.
The building is attached to Westland Mall, an indoor shopping center owned by Dallas-based Centennial. The deal also includes an outparcel that was previously a Sears automotive center and an adjoining parking lot.
In 2020, Seritage closed the department store and automotive center, which were both completed in 1980 and sit on 15 acres, records show.
Codina is partnering with Centennial, James Carr and Manny Kadre to redevelop the Sears site into a mixed-use project with an apartment component, according to a press release.
We are very early in the planning stages, but would love to provide primarily residential with additional retail subject to Centennial’s approval,” Armando Codina said in a statement. “Commercial is also a possibility. The goal is for this project to be as transformational for Hialeah as Downtown Doral has been for the city of Doral.”
”
Downtown Doral is Codina’s master-planned, mixed-use community of condominiums, apartments, retail and restaurants in Doral.
Centennial, led by Steven Levin, acquired Westland Mall last year from Barry Sternlicht’s Starwood Capital Group by assuming a $149.4 million mortgage.
The shopping center’s anchor tenants are Macy’s and JCPenney, but both buildings are owned by other entities. Retailers at Westland Mall include Bath & Body Works, Pandora, and Express Factory Outlet.
Seritage, a New York-based Sears real estate spinoff led by CEO Andrea Olshan, has been offloading properties for the past year. It’s part of a strategy to pay down $640 million in mortgage debt owed to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.
Last year, Seritage sold a former Sears site at Southland Mall in Cutler Bay to North Palm Beach-based Electra America and Aventura-based BH Group for $34 million. Also last year, Seritage sold an Aldi-anchored retail plaza near North Miami for $38 million to Raanan Katz’s RK Centers.
Seritage is also finishing construction of Esplande at Aventura, an office and retail project on the site of a former Sears store at Aventura Mall, according to the company’s first quarter earnings report.