Christ Fellowship Church acquired a Macy’s Furniture and Mattress Gallery in Boca Raton for $23.5 million.
An affiliate of the Palm Beach Gardens-based church acquired the 50,000-square-foot retail store at 9339 Glades Road, records and Vizzda show. The deal expands Christ Fellowship’s real estate portfolio in Palm Beach County, where the church purchased a Jupiter gym last year.
Macy’s owned the 5.3-acre property in Boca Raton since 1999, when the building was completed, records show. A company spokesperson said Macy’s has a lease back option through the middle of this year as part of the sale to Christian Fellowship.
“It is our intent to relocate our furniture and mattress gallery to a nearby location once the lease expires,” the spokesperson said.
In recent weeks, the department store chain announced that the company was closing five stores in four states, including one in Florida’s capital city, Tallahassee. Macy’s is also laying off 13 percent of its corporate staff as the retail giant to trim costs and redirect spending to improve the customer experience, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Macy’s also closed a handful of stores last year.
Christ Fellowship, led by senior pastors Todd and Julie Mullins, is in expansion mode. In May of last year, the non-denominational evangelical church bought Jupiter Fitness Center at 1200 West Indiantown Road for $8 million, records show. The faith-based organization plans to convert the 20,000-square-foot shuttered gym into a 368-seat church.
With the purchase of the Macy’s location, Christ Fellowship now owns 20 properties in Palm Beach County, according to records.
South Florida has experienced a handful of standalone retail building trades recently. This month, an affiliate of West Aventura Developers, led by Marina Kessler and Gustavo Lumer, paid $15.4 million for a 45,000-square-foot building leased to L.A. Fitness in south Miami-Dade County. The recently completed building was developed and sold by Ram Realty Advisors.
Also this month, Whole Foods Market bought a commercial space housing one of its stores in a downtown Miami mixed-use building. The Amazon-owned grocer paid $21 million for the ground-floor unit at Met3.