JLL closes the sale, loan of Southwest Florida retail center

MIAMI, December 18, 2019 – JLL announced today that it has closed the sale of and arranged acquisition financing for Grand Bay Plaza, a 77,810-square-foot, Publix-anchored neighborhood shopping center in the southwest Florida community of Fort Myers.

JLL marketed the property on behalf of the seller, Phillips Edison & Company, Inc. A partnership between Bayshore Investment Partners and Lombardi Properties purchased the asset. Additionally, working on behalf of the new owner, JLL placed the 10-year, fixed-rate acquisition loan with Rialto Mortgage Finance.

Grand Bay Plaza is one of only four grocery-anchored centers in a historically underserved submarket. Nearly 95% leased, the center is anchored by a high-volume Publix, the dominant Florida grocery, and home to a mix of national retailers and service providers, including Sherwin Williams, Subway, Coast Dental, UPS and Care Nails. Situated on 17.3 acres at 19100 S. Tamiami Trail, Grand Bay Plaza is located along the area’s primary thoroughfare and visible to approximately 50,000 vehicles per day. Additionally, the center is in in a dense trade area proximate to the 15,000-student Florida Gulf Coast University and numerous upscale residential communities. More than 46,500 residents earning an average annual household income of $87,347 live within a three-mile radius of the center.

The JLL Retail Capital Markets team that represented the seller included Managing Director Luis Castillo, Director Eric Williams and Senior Managing Director and Co-Head of JLL’s Retail Practice Danny Finkle.

The JLL Capital Markets debt placement team that represented the new owner was led by Director Brian Gaswirth.

“The appetite for grocery-anchored retail is extremely robust in Florida, and properties with Publix as the anchor tenant are still commanding a premium in the market,” Castillo said.

JLL Capital Markets is a full-service global provider of capital solutions for real estate investors and occupiers. The firm's in-depth local market and global investor knowledge delivers the best-in-class solutions for clients — whether investment advisory, debt placement, equity placement or a recapitalization. The firm has more than 3,700 Capital Markets specialists worldwide with offices in nearly 50 countries.

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Phillips Edison & Company, Inc. (“PECO”), an internally managed REIT, is one of the nation’s largest owners and operators of grocery-anchored shopping centers. PECO’s diversified portfolio of well-occupied neighborhood shopping centers features a mix of national and regional retailers selling necessity-based goods and services in fundamentally strong markets throughout the United States. Through its vertically integrated operating platform, the company manages a portfolio of 330 properties, including 294 wholly owned properties comprising approximately 33.2 million square feet across 32 states (as of September 30, 2019). PECO has generated strong operating results over its +28-year history and has partnered with leading institutional commercial real estate investors, including TPG Real Estate and The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company. The company remains exclusively focused on creating great grocery-anchored shopping experiences and improving the communities it serves one center at a time. For more information, please visit phillipsedison.com.

Bayshore Investment Partners and Lombardi Properties, both Miami-based operators, will make Grand Bay Plaza their fourth property acquired together since forming a partnership in 2015. Since 2000, Lombardi Properties has been the leader of Wynwood’s transformation from defunct manufacturing district to the epicenter of Miami’s creative community. As an active investor in other emerging markets, Lombardi has initiated a strategy to diversify its portfolio out of urban markets and into suburban markets across Florida. With over $40 million of dispositions over the past few years, the Lombardi portfolio currently consists of 10 assets with over 200,000 square feet of space with a market value in excess of $120 million. Bayshore Investment Partners currently owns and manages over 1,500 apartment units with a market value in excess of $210 million. Together, the partnership seeks to acquire retail, small-bay warehouse and flex properties throughout Florida in the $5 to $20 million range.