Rooms To Go is planning to redevelop two recently acquired retail buildings in Kendall into one of the company’s largest furniture showrooms.
“It’s a brand new prototype,” Rooms To Go Vice President Peter Weitzner told The Real Deal. “We are going to demolish what is there and build a huge Rooms To Go store.”
An affiliate of Seffner, Florida-based Rooms To Go, led by CEO Jeffrey Seaman, paid $29.9 million for the buildings spanning 55,824 square feet at 2405 Southwest 88th Street, records and real estate database Vizzda show.
The deal breaks down to $535 a square foot. Rooms To Go paid $17.9 million above the previous sale price 27 years ago.
The seller, an affiliate of Lawrence, New York-based Light Properties, paid $12 million for the 3.8-acre site in 1998, records show. Completed in 1996, the vacant buildings were previously leased to Michaels and Barnes & Noble.
Miami-Dade County approved plans filed by Rooms To Go in January to replace the two buildings with a 51,662-square-foot store. The new building would be one of the furniture retailer’s new superstores that will also have Rooms To Go Kids and Rooms To Go Patio, Weitzner said. Typical Rooms To Go stores are roughly 40,000 square feet.
The company expects to break ground next year and anticipates opening the new store in 2027, Weitzner added. Founded in 1990, Rooms To Go has more than 150 stores in 10 states, according to the firm’s website.
South Florida’s retail market has experienced a handful of big box store trades this year. In January, Raanan Katz’s Sunny Isles Beach-based RK Centers picked up a single-story facility in Pembroke Pines for $15.2 million. The seller, City Furniture, signed a long-term lease to remain in the building.
In June, Indianapolis-based Simon Property Group, led by David Simon, bought a ground lease for a big box store at Dadeland Mall leased to JCPenney for $15.6 million. Simon also owns the Kendall shopping center. The same month, the firm acquired a shuttered Sears store for $23 million. The building is within Simon’s Town Center at Boca Raton in Palm Beach County.
Also in June, EOS Wellness Real Estate Miami LLC paid $28.5 million for a vacant retail building previously leased to Office Depot in Miami Beach’s Sunset Harbour neighborhood.
