Restoration Hardware looking at Design District for flagship store

Updated, March 24, 1:35 p.m.: Restoration Hardware is looking for a site in the Miami Design District for a flagship store, The Real Deal has learned. 

Previously, MV Group CEO Manny Varas said the home-furnishings company, along with Waterworks, was in talks to take the entire 14,000-square-foot, three-story building at 4136 North Miami Avenue. Varas, part of the property’s ownership group expects to complete the building by the end of March.

Varas now told TRD that he “was under the assumption that we were in conversations” with Restoration Hardware, but his “assumption was incorrect.”

Restoration Hardware did not respond to requests for comment. The furniture store company has an outlet at the Shops at Sunset Place, as well as a showroom at Aventura Mall. It shuttered its store at the Falls in recent years.

Asking rent at 4136 North Miami Avenue was $75 per square foot, triple net for the ground floor and $60 per square foot on the second and third floors, Varas said. Asking rent is now $60 per square foot blended for all three floors, plus the 8,000-square-foot rooftop. “We’re basically looking at $750,000 annual triple net for the entire building, including the rooftop area and underground parking garage, which is about 26 spaces,” Varas said.

Commercial broker Lyle Chariff, who’s active in the Design District, said Restoration Hardware has been looking for a space in the district “for a long time, but they basically were very rent sensitive. They weren’t willing to pay the very high rates that were being asked in the Design District,” said Chariff, president of Chariff Realty Group, adding that the company has been looking for an owner that would get a 7 percent return on the property instead.

Craig Robins, president and CEO of Dacra, which is spearheading the redevelopment of the district, also said via email that he has had talks with Restoration Hardware in the past.

Varas said he bought the 9,400-square-foot property at 4136 North Miami Avenue with investors in 1999 for $500,000. The $6 million project was partially financed with a $3.5 million construction loan from Stonegate Bank, negotiated by Vice President Juan Carlos Deona.

MV Group broke ground on the building in August 2015, one of the only Mediterranean-style buildings to be developed in the otherwise modern-style Design District in recent years.

The Design District — broadly defined as the area from Biscayne Boulevard to North Miami Avenue, and from the north side of 36th Street to 42nd Street, with the center the Paseo Ponti and First Avenue — is the subject of a multimillion-square-foot revamp that will ultimately include 120 stores and at least 15 eateries in the neighborhood by the end of 2018, said Craig Robins, president and CEO of Dacra, in The Real Deal’s March issue. Current tenants include Hermes, Tiffany & Co., Louis Vuitton and Dior.

Correction: In a previous version of this story, Manny Varas said he was in talks with Restoration Hardware, which he now says was not true. His broker, Tony Arellano of Metro 1 had disputed the veracity of the talks.