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Building along Interstate 95 in Broward to be renovated after $7M deal

New York real estate investor Steve Samuels acquired an industrial/office building along Interstate 95 in Hollywood and will make a significant investment in renovations.

The property was previously envisioned as a trampoline park called Off the Wall, but the seller recognized the opportunity to make a considerable profit by selling the property, said Ted Konigsberg of Infinity Commercial Real Estate, which represented seller OTW II LLC. The company is led by Samuel Eyal Yecutieli and Ervin Andrei Mendel.

The 55,221-square-foot building, at 2850 Greene St., was acquired by Avid Asset Properties Hollywood, managed by Samuels, for $7.35 million. It last traded for $5 million in 2016.

Jeff Cebula and Spencer Grossman of NAI Merin Hunter Codman represented the buyer.

Konigsberg said Samuels will spend over $1 million reconfiguring the building to appeal to a broader array of tenants, such as designers, showrooms and professional firms. The two-story building is half showroom and half office space.

This area of Hollywood has attracted many design firms, some of which left the Design Center of the Americas, Konigsberg said.

“I am very excited about the potential of this iconic building,” Samuels said. “Working with the city of Hollywood, we will be reconfiguring the entire site. It’s our intention to bring a new and innovative concept to the area.”

Samuels has previously redeveloped industrial buildings in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

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Need a big box? Four empty PBC retail spaces fit the bill

Article by Jeff Ostrowski – Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Entrepreneur Hannah Wickins scoured Palm Beach County for space suitable for the indoor pet park that she calls “Disney World for dogs.” She settled on the long-empty Home Depot Expo at Woolbright Road and Interstate 95 in Boynton Beach. Wickins signed a bargain lease for 20,000 square feet for her Dog Activity World Group.

“It was a very desolated plaza,” Wickins said. “But the location had potential. I knew it was only a matter of time before that plaza turns around.”

Indeed. The former Home Depot Expo space has sat empty for nearly a decade. But in a recent flurry of activity, Wickins leased the 20,000 square feet at the south end of the property, and Illinois-based retailer Camping World this spring bought the other 88,000 square feet for $8.25 million.

Wickins hopes both tenants will open for the 2018 holiday season.

One empty big box has been filled, but other merchants’ struggles have emptied big boxes in Palm Beach County. Some call it “retail Armageddon.” The closing of a Sam’s Club and the collapse of the Gander Mountain and Toys R Us chains have vacated hundreds of thousands of square feet of retail space with tens of millions of dollars of taxable value in Palm Beach County alone.

As Wickins’ dog park and daycare illustrates, many of the new tenants for retail space aren’t traditional retailers. A trampoline park is moving into a former HHGregg electronics store in Wellington. Elsewhere, churches, charter schools, gyms and co-working spaces have filled empty stores.

“A lot of these boxes will become more focused on entertainment,” said commercial real estate broker Bill Reichel of Reichel Realty in Palm Beach Gardens.

Even as Amazon has decimated many merchants, Palm Beach County’s retail vacancy rate remains in the single digits. After Sports Authority closed its locations in 2016, its Palm Beach County spaces were filled by such retailers as Rooms to Go, HomeGoods and Burlington Coat Factory.

The return of homebuilding is buoying Palm Beach County’s retail market, said Bruce Corn of NAI/Merin Hunter Codman.

“They’re building again – and they’re building a lot,” Corn said. “With residential comes retail.”

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Q&A: NAI Chairman and South Florida Broker Neil Merin on Bubbies, Bubbas and Brightline

NAI/Merin Hunter Codman Exec Expresses Concern About Rise in Sublease Space

In the 1970s, Neil Merin was making $160 a week running a production line for a toy manufacturer in the Northeast when he quit to move to Palm Beach County for a property manager position that paid 10 percent more.

The new gig would be short-lived.

“The company I went to work for down here went out of business six months after I joined, so I went and got a real estate license and started selling properties in 1976,” he explained.

Merin would start West Palm Beach-based NAI / Merin Hunter Codman in 1982, and today he is one of South Florida’s longest-tenured commercial real estate brokers.

While he handles all aspects of the brokerage industry, his specialty is the sale and leasing of office and retail properties. Just in the past two decades, Merin has represented tenants and landlords in negotiations totaling more than 30 million square feet and values exceeding $7 billion.

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NEWS PICK-UP: 2017 Big Year for Neil Merin

“Merin, Chairman of NAI/Merin Hunter Codman in West Palm Beach, handled three high-profile sales last year that  ranked among the top eight of SIOR’s list:

  • The $64.5 million sale of the 245,000 SF Golden Bear Plaza in North Palm Beach
  • The $62.3 million sale of a interest in a 245,673 SF property in Palm Beach Gardens
  • The $54.5 million sale of the 241,000 SF Fountain Square in Boca Raton”

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NEWS PICK-UP: Jeff Greene set to break ground for West Palm’s first new office space in a decade

“The Palm Beach Post reported that billionaire Jeff Greene is ready to hire a general contractor to build a 30-story office, hotel and apartment complex in West Palm Beach.

Neil Merin, chairman of NAI/Merin Hunter Codman, told the Palm Beach Post that Greene and Related Cos. will need at least five years to lease the office space at both One West Palm and 360 Rosemary if they open simultaneously.”

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NEWS PICK-UP: Related plans new office tower at CityPlace’s north end

The Related Cos. plans to build an 18-story office building on the north end of CityPlace, a move that could boost efforts to link the West Palm Beach mixed-use center to the rest of downtown and further develop the city’s core urban district.

360 Rosemary is slated to rise at the corner of Rosemary Avenue and Evernia Street, the first in a series of steps designed to expand and update CityPlace, a shopping, dining and residential center built by Related.

The 285,000-square-foot tower will be across from Publix. The supermarket was courted for the ground floor space, but a Related official said this week that Publix is staying put at CityPlace. The office tower instead will feature another retailer.

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“It’s a big building for our market,” said Neil Merin, chairman of NAI/Merin Hunter Codman in West Palm Beach.

Related tried to build another office tower next to CityPlace a few years ago, but it was unable to obtain enough tenants willing to pre-lease space in the project, dubbed Gateway Tower.

In 2014, Related pulled the Gateway Tower plan. The next year, it unveiled a different idea: The Restoration Hardware furniture gallery, which opened last year.

Merin said Related, at some point, will need to decide whether it’s going to rely on pre-leasing to clinch a decision to build 360 Rosemary, “or if they’re going to build it anyway.”

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