East End, BentallGreenOak sell South Beach office building for $52M

East End Capital and BentallGreenOak sold an office building in Miami Beach for $52.3 million.

An entity tied to The Davis Companies, based in Boston, bought the four-story property at 555 Washington Avenue, according to a deed.

The building consists of 46,000 square feet of Class A office space; 22,000 square feet of ground-floor retail and a 243-space garage, according to East End’s website. The Arquitectonica-designed blue and white building has curving glass corners on one side and a glass lobby.

It was constructed in 2001, property records show.

It’s centrally located on the edge of the South of Fifth neighborhood and near MacArthur Causeway, one of the main connectors between South Beach and Miami.

New York-based East End bought the property in 2018 for $38 million, along with GreenOak Real Estate, embarking on facade and streetscape improvements. (GreenOak merged with Bentall Kennedy in 2019, forming Toronto-based BentallGreenOak.)

The building gained 37.5 percent in value since it last traded five years ago

East End, led by Jonathon Yormak and David Peretz, has been selling off its South Florida real estate in recent months. This year, it sold two Wynwood properties to 7G Realty and Forte Capital. In March, East End sold the warehouse at 2214 North Miami Avenue, which was converted to retail, for $10.8 million. It also sold the retail property at 310-318 Northwest 25th Street for $11.8 million in February, or shortly after a foreclosure suit against the property was dismissed.

East End also sold the 100 Biscayne office tower in downtown Miami to Aby Rosen’s RFR Holding for about $90 million in January. The 30-story building at 100 North Biscayne Boulevard had been mired in litigation between East End and its Australian investment partners. Also, BentallGreenOak was in line to buy the building in 2020 but the deal failed, resulting in additional litigation and a judge ordering East End and Australian investors to pay back BentallGreenOak’s $5.5 million deposit in 2021.

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The Davis Companies, led by founder and CEO Jonathan Davis, is a real estate investment, development and management company founded in 1976, according to its website. It has made more than 225 investments spanning over 27 million square feet of commercial space, over 11,000 residential units, and about $9.9 billion in gross asset value. The Davis Companies also has built 12 million square feet of real estate and purchased $550 million in mortgage debt.

In Brooklyn, The Davis Companies plans a 45-story mixed-use tower in Fort Greene with 123 rental units, offices and ground-floor retail.

Miami Beach city officials have pushed to morph South Beach from a popular tourist destination known for boisterous partying into an office market. The city is in discussions with two different development teams to build offices on parking lots near Lincoln Road.

The city is negotiating with a group that includes Barry Sternlicht’s Starwood Capital Group, which is based in Miami Beach, to build 109,517 square feet of offices, 23,437 square feet of retail, and a 427-space garage on parking lots at 17th Street and Lenox Avenue, as well as near the Colony Theater at 1040 Lincoln Road, according to media reports.

For the other project, a group consisting of Don Peebles, Scott Robins and former Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine is in talks with the city to redevelop the garage at 1664 Meridian Avenue with 77,944 square feet of offices, 9,452 square feet of retail, 43 residential units and a 288-space parking lot.

Separately, Sumaida + Khurana and Bizzi & Partners, both based in New York, plan a five-story office building at 944 5th Street and 411 Michigan Avenue in South Beach