Sterling Sells Pembroke Pines Shopping Center for $38M

PEMBROKE PINES, FL—The Sterling Organization has sold the nearly fully-leased Pembroke Place shopping center here for $37.5 million to Boston-based Longpoint Realty.

The 158,463-square-foot grocery-anchored shopping center in Broward County is located approximately 12 miles southwest of Downtown Fort Lauderdale and was 99% leased at the time of sale.

Casey Rosen and Dennis Carson of CBRE represented Sterling in the transaction.

West Palm Beach, FL-based Sterling Organization acquired Pembroke Place in November 2008. At the time of purchase, the property was a 276,874-square-foot Kmart and Sedano’s-anchored shopping center. In 2014, Renaissance Charter Schools subleased the freestanding Kmart building, and in November 2018, Sterling sold the freestanding, 114,912-square-foot building to Renaissance Charter Schools for $10.5 million. In February 2017, a Chase Bank outparcel was replatted and subsequently sold for more than $4.6 million.

With those two other transactions, the total proceeds associated with the disposition of the three Pembroke Place parcels amounted to approximately $52.7 million.

At the time of sale, the property was 99% leased and anchored by a Sedano’s grocery store, Crunch Fitness and Vargas University.

“With the benefit of hindsight, the outset of the GFC (global financial crisis) was a tough time to be buying a shopping center, but through patience and creativity, our team was ultimately able to pull multiple value-creation levers to generate outsized returns on behalf of our partners over the 11-year investment hold period,” says Brian Kosoy, managing principal, president and CEO of the Sterling Organization. “We wish Longpoint Realty luck with what we view as a very solid asset, that should have additional upside to be harvested.”

In late February, Sterling acquired King Farm Village Center, a 118,326-square-foot grocery-anchored shopping center located in Rockville, MD for $40 million.

Sterling currently owns and operates a total of 51 properties across the country. Sterling is actively investing on behalf of two institutional funds—Sterling Value Add Partners III, which focuses on value-add real estate assets where the primary value is retail; and Sterling United Properties II, which focuses on core/stabilized grocery-anchored shopping centers—which have a combined buying power of well over $1 billion. In total, the Sterling Organization owns more than 10 million square feet of retail real estate across the US approaching $2 billion in value.