Galbut pays $10M for tire shop on Alton Road

A company linked to developer Russell Galbut just bought a tire shop on Miami Beach’s Alton Road for $10 million — almost 30 times what it last sold for in the 1980’s.

The building, located at 1575 Alton Road, measures 11,849 square feet and sits on a 15,000-square-foot lot.

It was first purchased by Firestone in 1986 for only $337,600. Two years later, the tire company was acquired by Bridgestone Corp. for a whopping $2.6 billion, and this property was passed along as a result.

After 29 years, the 11,849-square-foot building has again been sold, this time to a Miami limited liability company called ARRP Miami IV. It’s managed by David Smith and shares an address with Russel Galbut’s development firm Crescent Heights.

A listing for the Firestone property with brokerage HFF said it wasn’t encumbered by any historic designation, “freeing a new owner to complete an adaptive re-use of the existing improvements or develop a new mixed-use, multi-level structure up to 22,250 square feet.”

HFF’s capital markets team, led by Luis Castillo and Daniel Finkle, represented the seller, Castillo said.

Galbut is in the midst of developing a number of properties in Miami Beach, including the mixed-use project 1212 Lincoln Road. Plans for that project have met resistance from current tenants who are hesitant to make way for Galbut’s wrecking ball.

Crescent Heights is also working on the Wave, a mixed-use, four-building project that is projected to have 300,000-square feet of residential space, including 321 apartments, and approximately 50,000 square feet of retail space. The Wave will be located between Fifth and Seventh streets and between Alton Road and West Avenue.

Along with those two projects, the development firm has also received design approval for its plans to build a new 50,000-square foot project at 1901 Alton Road that will include a new 40,000-square foot Whole Foods Market.

In July, another company affiliated with Crescent paid $300 per square foot for an Alton Road parking lot.

For this Firestone purchase, Galbut’s company paid more than double that — $667 per square foot of land.