SJC Ventures sells Doral Marketplace for $83 million

Traditions Management, a Dallas-based developer and operator of senior living communities, is the buyer of record for Doral Marketplace after SJC Ventures sold the newly completed Whole Foods-anchored retail center in Doral, Fla., for $83 million, Commercial Observer reported, citing property records. The Atlanta developer finished the 10-acre, 89,000-square-foot strip mall at 10800 Northwest 41st Street last quarter, about a mile east of the Florida Turnpike and 14 miles west of downtown Miami, while the sale excluded 1.8 acres leased to Chick-fil-A. Traditions assumed the property's $50 million of outstanding debt.

Traditions Management's home turf is senior living, yet it paid $83 million for a center whose largest tenant is a 43,000-square-foot Whole Foods. The rest of the roster — J. Crew Factory, Ulta Beauty, Shake Shack, First Watch, GoodVets, The Spot Barbershop, Encore Nails, VIO MedSpa and Apizza Brooklyn Resto + Vino — is a defensive lineup of everyday-use retailers, the kind that behaves like a bond with a parking lot. A buyer from outside the retail world underwriting this trade suggests the bid for stable, necessity-based retail cash flow has broadened beyond conventional shop-focused investors.

Miami-Dade retail asking rents hit $42.50 a square foot in the second quarter, up 2.6 percent from the prior quarter, and the vacancy rate fell to 3 percent. More than 1.3 million square feet of retail space is under construction, including another Whole Foods location in South Beach for which developer Russell Galbut landed a $54 million construction loan last year. That pipeline will test whether rent growth can survive new supply, but with vacancy at 3 percent, demand has little room to soften before landlords feel it.

Traditions is buying the income stream along with the dirt, and the $50 million loan assumption keeps the debt with the asset. If Miami-Dade rents keep climbing, the leverage compounds the return; if vacancy starts to move, it compounds the loss. For a buyer whose core business is senior living, the Whole Foods is the safest tenancy it just acquired; the $50 million note that comes with it now sits at Bank of Texas.