MIAMI—With an eye toward transit-oriented development, the City of Opa-locka acquired a strategic asset in its own Central Business District (CBD). JWV Florida Properties sold an 80,000-square-foot mixed-use asset to the city for $7.9 million.

Miguel Alcivar, senior associate of CBRE Investment Properties, along with CBRE's Scott O'Donnell, Dominic Montazemi, Jason Hochman, and Greg Miller from CBRE's South Florida Commercial Investment Properties team represented the seller. Jeff Livingston from the CBRE/New England office also assisted.

“The city had tried to negotiate the purchase of the property before and they were considering going down a path of building their own property,” Alicvar tells GlobeSt.com. “The City of Opa-Locka was the perfect strategic buyer for the asset as it allows them to consolidate various municipal departments under 'one roof' in roughly 40% of the building, generate revenues by leasing the balance of the property to multiple tenants, and catalyze the growth and transformation of the Central Business District.”

The four-story, mixed-use office building with ground floor retail sits at 780 Fisherman Street in the heart of the Opa-locka's CBD. Built in 2004, the transit-oriented property is on 0.48-acres of land steps away from municipal offices and across the street from a Tri-Rail station.

Beyond being strategically located within a Miami Enterprise Zone, which grants the property a competitive advantage in attracting tenants, the mixed-use property connects with most of Miami's major highway systems and the Opa-locka Airport within four miles.

Mixed-use and transit-oriented developments are emerging as a staple of new construction across the Southeast, though they are still less visible to the capital markets. It's rare to see a new office or condo building rise without ground floor retail or a hotel component.

Miami is witnessing three game-changing mixed-use and transit-oriented developments coming off the drawing board and out of the dirt: Swire's $1.05 billion Brickell CityCentre with office, residential, retail and hotels; the $2 billion Miami Worldcenter with those same components; and Miami Central's All Aboard Florida, a three-million-square-foot urban mixed-use transit-oriented development.

“MiamiCentral demonstrates that a true passenger rail system and a connected public transportation system can reinvigorate a downtown, as so many world-class cities enjoy,” says Michael Reininger, All Aboard Florida's president and CEO. “This is a rebirth for two ideal areas of Downtown Miami, an opportunity to create an identity for a historic part of the city, and reinvigorate the desire for mass transit. The importance of Downtown Miami is evidenced by the significant investment made not only by All Aboard Florida, but other key developments, and will be a hugely sought after iconic destination, in a newly urbanized neighborhood.”