Your Top Picks From 2019 Real Estate Special Reports

By Lidia Dinkova | December 23, 2019 at 08:30 AM

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What do trains have to do with real estate development? In South Florida, a lot. Virgin Trains USA started running passenger trains connecting the downtowns of Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. Next, it will add stops in Aventura and Boca Raton. Separately, Tri-Rail is pushing its Coastal Link project that would add from 20 to 25 stops on Virgin's tracks, essentially filling in the gaps left by Virgin. All this lays the track for a development boom associated with future stations, and municipalities along the route don't want to be left behind. Many have pinpointed station sites, prepared massive economic studies projecting job and population growth to show they are ready for a stop, and drawn renderings. Their visions generally are for a terminal, either for Virgin or Tri-Rail, surrounded by residential, office and retail development. It's all a nod to the latest trend in real estate known as transit-oriented development, where developers build near mass transit stations in light of growing traffic congestion.

Rise Medical Marijuana Dispensary in Deerfield Beach

This year there were plenty of headlines about retailers like department, clothing and toy stores filing for bankruptcy or closing locations in light of e-commerce growth. But in South Florida one retailer was in expansion mode: Medical marijuana dispensaries. They pushed to set up shop but faced an uphill battle as the number of storefronts available to them was limited by local restrictions on where they can open. This left the medical marijuana operations licensed in Florida to tussle over available space. "There's definitely a great deal of competition," said Joshua Leavitt, Florida market president for Chicago-based Green Thumb Industries, which has a Deerfield Beach dispensary and plans another four in the region.

The office market in South Florida is a bit of a nonconformist. All the talk among real estate circles has been about the urban core, namely the downtowns of Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, as well as Miami's Brickell Financial District. Yet, it turns out the majority of office construction was happening in suburban areas. The majority of new construction—40 of 50 office buildings—in the beginning of this year was outside central business districts. That's 64% of the 4 million square feet under construction at the time. An analysis of this showed that developers are building massive mixed-use projects in western South Florida, recreating the live-work-play lifestyle associated with the urban core.

GlobeSt.com's sister publication, The Daily Business Review, compiled four real estate special reports this year to gauge what drove the market, where development focused and what issues the industry faced. In February, we released our Office Guide, and in April it was time for our Industrial and Retail Guide. Then, we issued a Commercial Real Estate report in September, and to finish off the year we shed light on the top transactions in the October Biggest Deals Guide. Out of 13 stories total, three struck a particular chord with readers.

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Lidia Dinkova covers South Florida real estate for the Daily Business Review. Contact her at [email protected] or 305-347-6665. On Twitter @LidiaDinkova.

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