Michael Comras’ company is under contract for a retail property portfolio on Miami Beach’s Lincoln Road.
Miami Beach-based Comras Company is buying several properties from Morgan Stanley Real Estate Investing and Stephen Bittel’s Terranova, with the price pegged at about $140 million, Commercial Observer reported. The properties include 600, 719–737, 741, 801–821 Lincoln Road and 723 North Lincoln Lane. It’s unclear if Comras has an equity partner.
New York-based Morgan Stanley has been trying to sell the buildings this year, after buying them as part of a larger portfolio purchase in 2014, in a deal valued at $342 million. Miami Beach-based Terranova sold the properties at the time, retaining a stake.
Tenants include The Cheesecake Factory, Salt & Straw, It’Sugar and Lincoln Eatery.
This year, Duane Reade drugstore’s Cohen family was under contract for more than $150 million to purchase the buildings, but the deal fell through because the Cohens couldn’t find an equity partner or secure debt, the Commercial Observer reported.
Comras founded his eponymously named firm in 1992 after moving to South Florida from New York. The company, which also has a leasing brokerage division, already is a landlord on Lincoln Road.
Its properties include 635-639, 701 and 734-744 Lincoln Road, according to the company’s website. Tenants there include Aldo, Swarovski and Hoka.
Lincoln Road is South Beach’s pedestrian promenade that developer Carl Fisher created in the early 1910s. It was redesigned by architect Morris Lapidus and converted to pedestrian-only in the 1950s.
Over the years, it attracted hefty investment. In 2015, Comras sold the Lincoln Road block at 1001-1035 Lincoln Road to Spanish billionaire Amancio Ortega for $370 million. Vornado sold the building at 1100 Lincoln Road in 2022 to an affiliate of Steve Gozini’s Los Angeles-based BH Properties for $93.6 million.
Yet, in more recent years, Lincoln Road has lost some of its luster to newer competing retail and dining hubs such as the Miami Design District and Wynwood. Last year, Tricera Capital and investors Scott Robins and Philip Levine paid $13.6 million for 318-334 Lincoln Road, marking a discount from the $20.5 million Aby Rosen’s RFR Realty had paid in 2019. Also last year, Torose Equities bought 910 Lincoln Road for $10.4 million, a discount from the $15.8 million seller Invesco Real Estate had paid in 2010.
Many storefronts are currently vacant, and the Regal South Beach movie theater is shuttered.
Still, investors and developers are planning projects. Lionstone Development, the Ben-Josef Group and Flag Luxury Group started in August the first phase of their planned $12 million streetscape improvement at the 100-300 blocks of Lincoln Road. The developers, who own Sagamore and Ritz-Carlton South Beach hotels at 1671 Collins Avenue and 1 Lincoln Road, plan a 15-story, 30-unit condo tower on the property. It will be branded Billionaires’ Beach.
Near Lincoln Road, Paul Cejas, former ambassador to Belgium and the chairman of PLC Investments, wants to develop a 15-story, 210-unit apartment tower at 1600 Washington Avenue and 1601 Drexel Avenue.
In August, Robert Rivani paid $37 million for the historic Lincoln Theatre building anchored by H&M at 551 Lincoln Road.
–– Lidia Dinkova
