Retail developer Michael Comras is making a fresh bet on Miami Beach’s Lincoln Road, scooping up a cluster of buildings a decade after unloading much of his portfolio on the famed promenade.
Comras, who moved to the area from New York in the 1990s, is purchasing five lots from a Morgan Stanley real estate fund and Terranova Capital for $130 million, with the bulk of it financed by Acore Capital.
It marks his return to the tourist corridor after selling a package of retail tenants to Zara founder Amancio Ortega for $370 million in 2015 — a deal struck when rents were high and storefronts were full. This time, the strip has hit a rougher patch and he’s acquiring almost twice the square footage at roughly half the price he sold for.
“Lincoln Road languished for the last 10 years,” Comras said, partially blaming the “retail apocalypse” and noting that the street’s huge spaces for flagship retail stores have fallen out of style. “Different areas of Miami started to get hot and it sort of sucked the life out of Lincoln Road.”
But now Comras is planning an overhaul that will include a pedestrian walkway and a public plaza, hoping he can lure high-end retail and restaurants to the area. He’s adding 130,000 square feet to the 55,000 square feet that he still owned on the promenade. His vision includes carving out one of the deep storefronts to build a “micro village” of smaller boutique-size spaces around an open-air courtyard.
It’s the latest development in an effort to revive Lincoln Road. The strip that runs from Miami Beach to Biscayne Bay is home to mall staples and dotted with tourist trap restaurants and souvenir stores. Vacancies have been piling up over the years and it isn’t a major draw for locals.
The city of Miami Beach is pouring nearly $30 million into improvements ranging from landscaping to expanded sidewalks. Construction is underway nearby on an 800-room Hyatt hotel adjacent to the Miami Beach Convention Center that should bring more foot traffic to the area.
The developers remodeling the beach-front Ritz Carlton hotel and residences formed a public-private partnership with local governments and have plans for public art installations, a park, and revamped sidewalks that will make for a more upscale neighborhood which would be a closer match to the $125 million penthouse they’re marketing.
Other retail developers have already placed bets on the area’s revitalization — developer Robert Rivani bought a theater-turned-retail space for $37 million. He’s also building an office a block off of Lincoln Road, where he secured a lease with Playboy for their new headquarters.
Comras knows the street’s cycles well. In the 2000s, he signed tenants like Apple and Nike. Since then, he developed retail space for the Miami World Center, an ambitious 27-acre downtown development, as well as a popular retail plaza in the trendy Coconut Grove neighborhood.
Lincoln Road became a prominent shopping destination dating back as far as the 1920s, with subsequent openings from brands like Saks Fifth Avenue and Cadillac. A portion became pedestrian only in the 1960s.
The recent activity on Lincoln Road prompted the Miami Herald editorial board to publish a piece last month that urged local leaders and developers to make the area more appealing to locals, filling in empty storefronts and replacing cheap souvenir stores with independent book stores and cafes and trendy restaurants, noting that the “pedestrian mall has the space and the location to thrive, but its days of glory are, sadly, in the past.”
“You still have 10 million people that go down Lincoln Road every year,” said Comras of the consistent foot traffic from tourists. “What’s missing is the draw from the locals.”
Anna J Kaiser, Bloomberg
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