Neighborhood Retail Turns Lender Heads

MIAMI—Beyond SoBe and Miami, Kendall is a retail hotspot—and lenders are taking notice. GREC just inked an $11.25 million first mortgage for Coral Reef Village in Kendall's Country Walk neighborhood.

CBRE's first vice President Christopher Apone collaborated with CBRE's Charles Foschini and Christian Lee in arranging the loan for GREC. Morgan Stanley provided the 10-year loan at what CBRE called "competitive rates" for the purpose of refinancing the previous mortgage on the property.

”This transaction represents the continued interest from conduit lenders to make loans on high-quality, neighborhood retail assets in South Florida,” says Apone. “The borrower was able to capitalize on historically low rates and set the stage for strong cash flow from the property over the next decade.”

Coral Reef Village, a 55,621-square-foot retail center, is located at one of Miami's highest traffic intersections and offers ingress/egress from two major traffic arteries, Southwest 152nd Street and 137th Avenue. Little Caesar's, H&R Block, and Dunkin Donuts are major tenants.

“Banks today are looking more carefully at so many variables such as location, asset type, quality of the asset, quality of the tenants and cash flow, reasonable loan to value and debt coverage scenarios and most importantly the quality of the sponsor,” Jack Hazan, co-founder of Winchester Equities, tells GlobeSt.com. “All of this combined makes a potential loan less risky for a lender now that sponsors have more skin in the game.”

Kendall is seeing plenty of activity lately. CREC continues its retail leasing push, adding Downtown Dadeland to its leasing portfolio and bringing on former Simon Property Group expert Rafael Romero as a senior vice president. Romero most recently handled leasing for Simon's Dadeland Mall and the Shops at Sunset Place.

Principal Real Estate Investors, owner of Miller Square Shopping Center, partnered with CREC and Schiff Properties to create new space for a ground-up development that will become the new home to a Ross store in Miami's West Kendall submarket. Located on the Southwest corner of 137th Avenue and Southwest 56th Street, Miller Square currently spans 196,323 square feet.