Disney Company Sells Strip Center for Near Record Per-SF Price

ORLANDO-Retlaw LP, a California-based company owned by the family of the late Walt Disney, has sold the two-year-old, 27,500-sf Sand Lake Plaza in southwest Orange County to a private Boca Raton investor for $10.25 million or $372.73 per sf.

GlobeSt.com research shows Retlaw was the predecessor of Walt Disney Inc. and at one time owned both Disney assets and non-Disney assets, such as two television stations, a cattle ranch and several agricultural properties.

The per-sf price is the second highest retail transaction closed to date in Central Florida. In July, New York-based TIAA-CREF Inc. paid an affiliate of Glenview IL-based Illinois Tool Works Inc. $57 million, or $387.19 per sf, for the 16-year-old, 147,214-sf Crossroads at Lake Buena Vista. Disney Development Co. built Crossroads in 1989, as GlobeSt.com reported July 25.

Martin P. Forster, director of investment services, and his associates at Orlando-based Pocklington, Pocklington & Forster Retail Investment Group/Advantis, brokered the Sand Lake Plaza sale. Forster tells GlobeSt.com the Sand Lake Plaza per-sf price would have beaten the Crossroads shopping center price "by a few bucks a square [foot]" if the mezzanine section in the Sound Advice store wasn't included as part of the property.

The Sand Lake per-sf price, without the mezzanine, "would get close to $400 per sf," Forster says. "But the mezz is there, so I don't think we can make the claim" as handling the highest per-sf-price transaction to date."

Sand Lake Plaza houses a branch of Sound Advice, Amscot and the Diamond Exchange. The property, at 1431 W. Sand Lake Rd., is immediately north of the 1.8-million-sf Florida Mall, the largest regional mall in Florida.

"An angle that is interesting [to the Sand Lake Plaza deal] is that two years ago we sold the land which was the old closed-down Sizzling Wok restaurant to the owner of the Sound Advice," Forster tells GlobeSt.com. "The property resulting from the ensuing unity of title meant that the owner was able to dispense with the setbacks that two separate properties would have had to comply with, thus allowing him to put more sf on the site than anyone else could have."

Forster says the Sound Advice owner "built the additional 12,000 sf and the result is Sand Lake Plaza." He calls the site "a good little property." Forster didn't disclose average asking rents at the strip center but area brokers familiar with the property tell GlobeSt.com the range is $28 to $30 per sf. "The rents that the property commands have more than justified the price per sf for this center," Forster adds.