From left: RK Centers principal Ranaan Katz and Seritage CEO Andrea Olshan in front of the shopping center at 1460 West 49th Street in Hialeah (Google Maps, Seritage Growth Properties, RK Centers)
Seritage Growth Properties made a $6 million profit in a single day by quickly flipping a Hialeah shopping plaza to RK Centers.
A Seritage affiliate bought Westland Gateway Plaza at 1460 West 49th Street for $22.1 million from Daytona Beach-based CTO Realty Growth on July 25, records show. The same day, Seritage sold the 117,021-square-foot retail center for $28.3 million to RK Centers, the Sunny Isles Beach-based retail real estate investment firm led by Miami Heat minority owner Ranaan Katz. The deeds recently became publicly available.
The deal marks a small bright spot for Seritage, a New York-based publicly traded company that’s a spinoff of Sears. Last month, the embattled firm recommended a plan to liquidate all of its real estate holdings and return the proceeds to shareholders, as Seritage seeks strategic alternatives to pay off $640 million in debt to billionaire Warren Buffett. The plan requires a two-thirds vote from shareholders.
Seritage’s board is also considering a possible sale of the company, which transitioned from a real estate investment trust to a C corporation in March.
Westland Gateway Plaza is on the site of a former Kmart store that Sears acquired for $5.7 million in 2000, records show. When Seritage was formed in 2015, the Hialeah property was among 235 former Sears and Kmart department store sites the company acquired, according to published reports. The Hialeah building was completed in 1968, records show.
After the Kmart closed in 2020, Seritage renovated the Hialeah property for multiple tenants, including Aldi, Ross Dress for Less, Bed Bath & Beyond, and dd’s Discount. The same year, Seritage sold the shopping center to CTO Realty Growth for $21 million, but still managed the property via a 25-year land lease, records show.
Seritage owns 161 properties with 19 million square feet of retail space across the country, including Esplanade at Aventura, a retail-and-office project currently under construction on the site of a former Sears at Aventura Mall. The company also owns a shopping center between Miami Shores and North Miami anchored by Ross Dress For Less, Aldi and Burlington that is part of a 38-property nationwide portfolio Seritage has listed for sale.
While Seritage is in selling mode, RK Centers is on the hunt for more retail properties to fatten its portfolio. In December, the company bought three Davie retail centers for a combined $28.7 million. Also last year, RK Centers acquired a Winn-Dixie-anchored shopping plaza in Miramar for $15.7 million; a Best Buy store in West Palm Beach for $12 million; and a Publix-anchored Plantation shopping center for $17 million.
