The fully leased Shops at Beacon Lakes near Dolphin Mall traded for $108 million, marking the top South Florida retail deal for at least the past four years.
The sale shows the retail market not only rebounded from a hit in 2020, but it pulled ahead from previous years when it was prospering and unplagued by the pandemic.
AEW Capital Management bought the multi-building, 33.8-acre Shops at Beacon Lakes at 1700-1970 Northwest 117th Place from a partnership of Stiles and Lubert-Adler Real Estate Funds, according to a news release from JLL, which represented the sellers.
The property is in unincorporated west Miami-Dade County and near Sweetwater.
AEW Capital, which manages real estate investments for institutional clients, purchased the property on behalf of an account client, according to the release. The client was not disclosed.
AEW also scored a $43.5 million acquisition loan from PGIM Real Estate Finance, the asset manager on behalf of Prudential Financial life insurance company. It is a seven-year, interest-only financing, according to the release.
Danny Finkle and Eric Williams of JLL handled the deal on behalf of the sellers. Paul Stasaitis of JLL secured the financing on behalf of the buyer.
Fort Lauderdale-based Stiles, led by Kenneth Stiles, developed the 417,248-square-foot Shops at Beacon Lakes last year. It is part of a larger project that includes a Topgolf facility just to the north and the headquarters for NBCUniversal’s Telemundo.
Philadelphia-based Lubert-Adler Real Estate Funds, co-founded in 1997 by Dean Adler and Ira Lubert, has invested $6.5 billion of equity into $16 billion of assets, according to the firm’s LinkedIn.
Tenants at the Shops at Beacon Lakes include The Home Depot, Ross Dress for Less, City Furniture, HomeStore, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Michaels, Five Below and 24 Hour Fitness. Panda Express, Jersey Mike’s Subs and BurgerFi are among the tenants on the outparcels, according to the release.
Discount retailers such as Ross Dress for Less have been in expansion mode this year, Colliers’ Dave Preston told The Real Deal in October.
In the third quarter, South Florida’s retail market surpassed its pre-pandemic performance, as vacancy rates fell and landlords responded by raising rents higher than before Covid-19 came into play, according to a Colliers report.
The Shops at Beacon Lakes sale tops out the biggest retail deal previously this year, Lone Star Funds and Woolbright Development’s joint venture purchase of Legacy Place in Palm Beach Gardens for $101.7 million.
It also surpassed the top deals for each of 2020, 2019 and 2018, according to a TRD analysis of Colliers data and news reports for these years.
In 2020, a Zurich Alternative Asset Management fund purchased the retail portion of the Plaza San Remo in Coral Gables for $46.8 million, marking the top deal that year.
The biggest sale of 2019 was InvenTrust Properties’ $96.8 million purchase of a Costco-anchored shopping center in Royal Palm Beach. And the biggest sale in 2018 was InvenTrust Properties’ $88 million purchase of PGA Plaza in Palm Beach Gardens.
AEW’s global CEO is Jeff Furber and its North America CEO is Jonathan Martin, according to the company’s website. AEW has 400 clients with $89.7 billion in assets under management across property types in North America, Europe and the Asia Pacific. The company has U.S. offices in Boston and Los Angeles, as well as throughout Europe, Asia and Australia.
This year, AEW also bought three apartment complexes in South Florida. In October, it paid a combined $123 million for a community in south Miami-Dade County and another in unincorporated Palm Beach County. This came on the heels of AEW’s $57 million purchase of a Homestead complex in January.