Miami-based investor Jon Samuel paid $24 million for a shuttered car lot in West Palm Beach that was the former headquarters of a defunct auto dealer.
Three entities managed by Samuel, who leads Miami-based Midtown Group, acquired the 14.7-acre site at 1200 South Congress Avenue, records show. The buyer obtained a $17 million mortgage from Seacoast National Bank.
A source familiar with the deal said the Samuel entities secured a long-term lease from Palm Beach County, which intends to use the property as a bus depot for Palm Tran. The site consists of a 50,717-square-foot commercial building and 1,250 parking spaces completed in 2016, records show.
Sky Groden with JLL brokered the deal on behalf of the seller, an affiliate of San Diego-based Realty Income, led by CEO Sumit Roy. In 2020, Dallas-based Spirit Realty (now part of Realty Income) acquired the property for $22 million from used car dealership Off Lease Only, which continued to lease the property as its headquarters.
In 2023, Off Lease Only filed for bankruptcy and liquidated its business, court records show. Spirit was among the creditors. A year later, Spirit merged with Realty Income.
Samuel, one of the original developers of mixed-use district Midtown Miami, has been wheeling and dealing in recent months.
In April, Samuel sold a showroom and warehouse leased to Floor & Décor in Coral Springs for $22.3 million. NorthBridge Partners, an industrial real estate firm based in Linthicum Heights, Maryland and Wakefield, Massachusetts, bought the property.
The same month, Samuel sold Sawgrass Landing, a fully leased shopping center in Sunrise, to Sunny Isles Beach-based SK Realty Management for $30 million.
In another Broward County deal, Samuel paid $28 million in December for a shuttered Sears store in Fort Lauderdale. The big box store sits on 18 acres within Broward Mall, a struggling retail center owned by a Barclays U.S. commercial mortgage-backed securities trust.
