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Electra, BH purchase former Cutler Bay Sears store for $34M
Seritage Growth Properties sold 130K sf retail building as part of national asset sell-off
Electra America and BH Group added a former Sears store to the joint venture’s Southland Mall assemblage slated for a $1 billion overhaul.
The joint venture acquired the 130,000-square-foot big box building for $34 million from Seritage Growth Properties, the New York-based Sears spinoff that is shedding real estate assets in South Florida and other parts of the U.S., according to a press release. Michael Fay and John Crotty brokered the sale, and Miami-based BridgeInvest financed the deal for an undisclosed amount.
Seritage had owned the 15-acre retail site at Southland Mall at 20505 South Dixie Highway in Cutler Bay since 2015, when the company acquired the entire nationwide Sears and Kmart real estate portfolio, records show.
Last month, North Palm Beach-based Electra, its Tampa-based affiliate American Landmark and Miami-based BH Group unveiled plans to transform the indoor shopping mall into Southplace City Center. The mixed-use project will include 4,395 apartments, a 150-key hotel, 60,000 square feet of medical office space, 150,000 square feet of retail outparcels and a community amphitheater, a press release states. As part of the redevelopment, the partnership will make cosmetic improvements and add new retailers, including a specialty grocer, to the existing 809,000-square-foot mall.
Electra, led by American Landmark CEO Joe Lubeck, and BH Group bought the 80-acre Southland Mall site for $100.3 million in April, records show. The shopping center and the Sears property are in an Opportunity Zone, a federally designated area where investors can achieve tax breaks if they use their capital gains to invest in a project in an underserved area.
The joint venture plans to break ground on the first apartment building next year with a target completion date in 2025, the release states.
Recently, Seritage sold an Aldi-anchored retail plaza near North Miami for $38 million to an affiliate of RK Centers, the Sunny Isles Beach-based real estate investment firm led by Raanan Katz.
The retail plaza, which includes a former Kmart store, was part of a 38-property portfolio Seritage listed over the summer as part of a strategy to pay down $640 million in mortgage debt owed to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. Seritage’s board of directors also recommended to shareholders to sell off all of the company’s real estate debt to repay the loan before it matures in June of next year.