Jon Samuel, one of the first developers at Midtown Miami, is venturing into Broward County, acquiring a shuttered Sears store for $28 million.
An affiliate of Samuel’s Miami-based Midtown Group acquired the 18-acre property at 8000 West Broward Boulevard that includes an empty big box building, records and real estate database Vizzda show.
A source familiar with the deal said Samuel has not decided how he intends to redevelop the site, which is part of Broward Mall, a struggling retail center owned by a Barclays U.S. commercial mortgage-backed securities trust. In 2022, the CMBS trust, which won a foreclosure judgment against the previous owner, acquired Broward Mall for $43 million at an auction. The mall also includes two other separately owned big box stores leased to Dillard’s and JCPenney.
New York-based Seritage Growth Properties, led by CEO Andrea Olshan, sold the Sears store to Samuel’s firm. The Sears spinoff abandoned plans submitted to the city of Plantation in 2020 to redevelop a portion of the Broward Mall site into an 80,000-square-foot retail center with restaurants, stores and a sports bar.
In October, Seritage sold another shuttered Sears store at Miami International Mall to Doral-based Easton Group for $17.1 million.
Samuel was part of the group that transformed an old rail yard into the first phases of Midtown Miami in the early 2000s. Today, Midtown Miami is a mix of retail shops, restaurants, big box stores, condominiums, apartment buildings and a Hyde-branded hotel.
More recently, Samuel branched into Homestead. In May, Samuel and South Miami-based Estate Companies bought a 20.8-acre vacant development site from Baptist Health South Florida for $14 million. The joint venture is planning Soleste Midtown, a mixed-use complex on Northeast 30th Avenue and Campbell Drive, the city’s main thoroughfare. Estate would develop six five-story multifamily buildings with 354 apartments, and Samuel would develop six commercial outparcels, city documents show.