UPDATED September 2 9:47 a.m.: With Henry Torres’ Astor Companies as its sponsor, CVS is building a new store near West Miami — and it’s already up for sale at $17.1 million.
Construction is now underway for the retailer’s new 15,000-square-foot location at 711 Southwest 57th Avenue. Torres told The Real Deal that his company has turned over its land to CVS’s builder, Boos Development, with an opening date tentatively slated for January 2017. The two have a lease agreement with an initial term of 25 years, with five options to extend by five years each.
County records show Astor also just took out $11.5 million in financing from Ocean Bank, which Torres described as permanent debt.
“It’s always nice to have a financing package, because when you find a buyer they typically step into your shoes in terms of financing,” he said.
Still under construction, the CVS is already on the market with an asking price of $17.1 million under JLL’s Stephen Gaunt, Torres said. The store’s development site occupies about 1.5 acres, which Astor assembled over the past year for about $8 million, according to county records.
Assembling the residential bits of land wasn’t easy, he said. One homeowner, Hortensia Martinez, wouldn’t budge until Torres agreed to replace her house with a new one on the same block. Astor also bought out and demolished Bottoms Up Lounge, a notorious Little Havana strip club.
“It was an adventure putting it together — trying to get that many people to get together to sell you a piece of dirt,” he said.
Properties leased to CVS and other national retailers are popular pickups for investors: in July, a company tied to former Argentinian president Nestor Kirchner sold a CVS Pharmacy store in Little Havana for $13.1 million. And earlier this year, a newly built CVS in Hallandale Beach traded to New York-based Trio Investments for $16 million.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the site was in East Little Havana. The property is actually near the northern border of West Miami.