Two real estate investment firms with billions of dollars under management have secured space in a redeveloped commercial building in Miami’s Coconut Grove neighborhood.
ACORE Capital and Trinity Investments have secured a total of 7,000 square feet on the second floor of The Canopy Offices, a former retail building at 2982 Grand Avenue that will reopen as a converted Class A boutique office later this month.
Both firms should be moving into their respective spaces in a couple of weeks, said The Canopy Offices’ developer, Michael Comras, principal of The Comras Company.
ACORE (which stands for Alpha Commercial Real Estate) will move into a 4,000-square-foot space. Based in San Francisco and founded by Warren de Haan, ACORE Capital has $19 billion in assets under management. The firm gave Michael Shvo a loan of about $146 million in 2015 to acquire the Richmond, South Seas, and Raleigh hotels in South Beach. That loan has since been refinanced by Fort Lauderdale-based BH3 Management.
Trinity Investments will open a 3,000-square-foot office. The Honolulu-headquartered firm has more than $9 billion in assets under management with a portfolio that includes the East Miami Hotel in the Brickell Financial District and the Diplomat Beach Resort in Hollywood, Florida.
Comras said The Canopy Offices will house the first offices in Miami for both firms. Trinity Investments and ACORE did not immediately return inquiries for comment. However, ACORE CEO Haan confirmed the move to their first South Florida office in a Comras Company release.
“As a major financial and property market, Miami is strategically located relative to our other East Coast office in New York, positioning us well to capitalize on the compelling origination opportunities we have identified in [South Florida], as well as along the broader East Coast,” Haan stated.
S & C Ventures, which shares the same Miami Beach office as Comras Company, acquired the 19,825-square-foot lot in 1994, according to the Miami-Dade Property Appraiser. No purchase price was listed. It was there that Comras said he built a retail building that previously served as a home for Spec’s Music, Old Navy, and a Shaq’s 24 Hour Fitness.
Comras told the Business Journal that he decided to redevelop the building as an office with ready-to-move in suites after seeing how strong leasing was for the office portion of the redeveloped Cocowalk complex.
The office market of Coconut Grove has heated up since the pandemic due to an influx of business executives from other parts of the country, he added.
“The whole idea was to cater to the new people who are moving into the Coconut Grove area,” Comras said.” …These are chief executives of major companies who want offices around the area they have chosen to relocate.”
The 33,000-square-foot building has 22,000 square feet of leasable office plus a 1,671-square-foot roof terrace. Comras said he is actively negotiating with firms interested in moving into the building’s remaining 15,000 square feet.
According to the second quarter market report from Colliers, the average asking rate for an office in Coconut Grove is higher than the average listed rent countywide. In Miami-Dade County, the average listed rent for an office in Q2 2024 was $54.29 per square foot. In Coconut Grove the average listed rent was $65.59 per square foot.
During the pandemic, high-income households flocked to South Florida in order to escape state income taxes and find better weather. In some cases those new arrivals opened offices, restaurants, and other facilities in the tri-county area as well.
However, there are signs that the migration of cash and people has slowed. According to the latest released figures from the IRS, and a report from Miami Realtors, the tri-county area experienced a net income increase of $8.6 billion between 2021 and 2022. That is lower than the $14.7 billion that flowed into South Florida between 2020 and 2021.
Erik Bojnansky, SouthFloridaBusinessJournal
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