Mark Gilbert, Mitchell Halpern, and Adam Feinstein of Cushman & Wakefield. Courtesy photos

Retail is reinventing itself to stay in business in competition with e-commerce. Yet one conventional Doral shopping plaza with traditional tenants like a grocery store and a coffee shop still sold for a record $70 million.

This was the biggest retail sale in Miami-Dade County so far this year.

A Cushman & Wakefield trio of vice chairman Mark Gilbert, executive director Adam Feinstein and director Mitchell Halpern, all based in Miami, handled the deal for the seller.

“We feel lucky when we get to work on properties that are this quality and in this type of submarket,” Gilbert said.

Not all retail is doing well now, Gilbert conceded. Doral Plaza is an exception: it's centrally located in growing, live-work-play Doral, there's high tenant demand, and it generated healthy interest from institutional investors, he said.

Lakeland-based Publix Super Markets Inc. bought the retail center from an affiliate of The Blackstone Group real estate giant. ShopCore Properties is a Chicago-based retail owner and operator.

Cushman & Wakefield represented Blackstone closing the deal June 24. The 111,990-square-foot plaza was 96% occupied with Publix as its anchor tenant.

The supermarket chain didn't return a request for comment on its purchase by deadline.

Publix the Landlord? 

The grocery store chain with locations in the Southeast U.S. is among a multitude of supermarket groups investing in real estate where they're located.

Publix bought the entire property, including its 39,795-square-foot space.

“At this point, Publix is the largest owner of Publix-anchored shopping centers in the market today by a long stretch, by multiples of anyone else,” Gilbert said.

He speculated about supermarket operators are getting more heavily into real estate, saying it allows them to diversify their investments, gives them long-term control of the properties and opens the door to redevelopment.

Florida levies a sales tax on commercial leases, which is passed down to renters. The tax now is 5.7% and will be reduced to 5.5% in 2020.

“If you just think about the rent that Publix pays to landlords and you think about the sales tax cost on that, by owning the real estate they totally avoid the sales tax cost,” Gilbert said. “We are talking millions, many millions of dollars.”

Doral Plaza

The center at 9701-9785 NW 41st St. was built in 1987, renovated in 2005 and now spans 12 acres northwest of Northwest 41st Street and 97th Avenue.

The main portion with the Publix store is on 10.5 acres. Other tenants include ABC Fine Wine & Spirits, Panera Bread and Starbucks. Chase Bank, Bank of America and a Marathon gas station are on outparcels.

Blackstone's ShopCore, which owned the property through its BPP Doral Plaza LLC affiliate, bought it in January 2017 for $71.53 million from Alecta Real Estate Doral Plaza LLC, according to county deeds.

Blackstone, a New York-based private equity, alternative asset management and financial services firm, is one of the biggest real estate owners in the world.

The company intended to hold the plaza long term, but Gilbert said Cushman & Wakefield marketed the asset to a select group of institutional investors.

Doral Plaza fared so well on the market mainly because it offers the service retail driven by foot traffic.

“Most of the tenants at Doral Plaza are probably internet-resistant as any tenant you are going to see because it's a lot of grocery, it's food and it's service,” Gilbert said. “It's still possible to order food online like Uber Eats, but most of that is coming out of restaurants.”

Online grocery shopping has not caught on despite big pushes by major retailers, he added.

Doral has been reinventing itself and growing as new projects sprout, notably the CityPlace Doral shopping and dining destination and the 250-acre Downtown Doral mixed-use project. The city's population increased by 36% from 2010 to 2018 when it reached 61,800, according to the U.S. census figures.

“If you think about Doral 25 years ago when the center was built, there was probably more cows than people,” Gilbert said. “Today it's a virtually fully developed city with more growth to go.”

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Who Says Retail is Dead? Publix Shops for $70M Doral Plaza