Looking to diversify its South Florida portfolio, Freshwater Group bought a Broward County mixed-use property for $15.7 million.
In recent months, commercial investors like Freshwater have boosted their interest in acquiring retail sites in the tri-county region’s suburban submarkets, as both sectors have rebounded significantly since the height of the pandemic.
The Brooklyn-based real estate investment firm bought Township Plaza, a 66,266-square-foot office and retail center in Coconut Creek, Freshwater managing partner Joseph Sayegh said. Freshwater paid $238 per square foot for the center.
Ben Silver with CBRE brokered the deal, Sayegh said.
The seller, an affiliate of Aventura-based S2 Development, led by Claudio Stivelman and Marc Schmulian, paid $10.1 million for Township Plaza in 2019, records show. Retail tenants occupy the ground floor, and office tenants are on the second floor of the two-story mixed-use center.
S2 completed renovations last year, and Township Plaza is 89 percent leased, according to a press release.
Retail tenants include Big Mountain Martial Arts, FireGrill Subs and McDonald’s, the release states.
Township Plaza hit the market about three months ago, Sayegh said. “We started shifting into South Florida retail this year,” he said. “This property caught our attention.”
Freshwater’s South Florida portfolio is primarily multifamily properties with a few strip malls and retail centers, Sayegh said. “In the last couple of months, we purchased three retail deals, including Township Plaza,” he said.
Founded in 1994 by Sayegh’s father Alfred Sayegh, Freshwater focuses on acquiring small to mid-size multifamily, office and retail assets in New York, Texas and Florida, primarily in Miami-Dade County, according to the firm’s website. Among the properties are a Miami office tower that Freshwater acquired for $7.2 million in 2020, and a Hialeah apartment complex purchased for $10.4 million in 2018.
In Broward, Freshwater also owns Westcom Plaza, a 21,332-square-foot shopping center in Fort Lauderdale that the company acquired for $6.3 million in May. The same month, Freshwater paid $2.5 million for a one-story retail building at 1331 Washington Avenue in Miami Beach.
Through the first seven months of this year, other investors have also targeted suburban retail properties in the tri-county region. This month, Miami Beach investor Jimmy Resnick paid $32 million for Kendall Marketplace in unincorporated south Miami-Dade.
Last month, a trio of Sunrise-based investors bought The Crossroads, a retail building in South Miami for $18.5 million. Also in June, two entities managed by North Miami Beach-based Alberto Dayan bought Arena Shoppes retail plaza in North Lauderdale for $31 million.