Apartments to fill vacant part of Volusia Mall
Part of the Volusia Mall in Daytona Beach would be razed and replaced with a luxury apartment community, under development plans recently submitted to the city, according to a report in GrowthSpotter.
California-based developer Legacy Partners is under contract with mall owner CBL Properties to purchase the site of the former Macy’s department store, which closed in early 2021.
Site plans filed to the city on July 22 call for the construction of a four-story, 350-unit gated apartment community in place of the former Macy’s and a section of parking lot at the backside of the mall on International Speedway Boulevard.
Jon Wood, senior managing director with Legacy Partners’ Maitland office, told GrowthSpotter the company has been eyeing mall redevelopment projects like this throughout the country. Recently, the developer completed the 350-unit Legacy Universal apartments on land once occupied by a dormant shopping center.
After another developer dropped out of this Volusia mall effort, Legacy reached out to the mall owner about the opportunity.
“We like Daytona Beach a lot,” Wood said. “It’s become a much more attractive market for new luxury apartment products, which is what attracted us to it. We saw other high-end luxury projects being developed there and doing really well with the lease-ups. We’ve been looking for opportunities there and we came upon this opportunity at the Volusia mall to buy the old Macy’s building and parking lot.”
The site is across from the Daytona Beach International Speedway, a short drive from its mixed-use entertainment site, One Daytona. It’s also a few miles from the beach and several college campuses, such as Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona State College and Bethune-Cookman University.
“We just love the location,” Wood said. “It’s really in the heart of Daytona Beach. We just feel like we are centrally located right in the middle of everything.”
The goal is to break ground by May of 2023, he said.
Millenia Plaza sells again
Millenia Plaza shopping center in Orlando’s tourist district has been too hot to hold lately, changing ownership four times in the past decade.
It sold again this week for $74.1 million — marking the largest shopping center trade in the Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford area thus far in 2022, according to national brokerage firm JLL Capital Markets, which has been involved in every transaction involving the asset since 2011.
“Every time I sell it, I think this is it — But then I get a phone call,” Brad Peterson, the Senior Managing Director of the firm’s Orlando office told GrowthSpotter. “It’s truly one of the best properties in Orlando, and I could venture to say it’s one of the best ones in the Southeast.”
And it’s only getting hotter. North American Development Group paid $56.4 million for the 411,503-square-foot shopping center in 2019. They sold it in July to Miami-based Limestone Asset Management for $17 million more, representing a nearly 24% increase in sales price at $180 per square-foot.
“That stretch of the Millenia trade area just continues to get so much stronger,” Peterson said. “it continues to dominate.”
Limestone Asset Management currently holds assets exceeding $200 million across the United States.
“We are excited to acquire this valuable property in the most visited city in the U.S.,” said Ibrahim Al-Rashid, chairman of Limestone Asset Management. “This purchase not only adds to our portfolio of properties around the Mall at Millenia, but it shows our commitment to the Orlando area.”
Millenia Plaza — a fully leased, open-air retail center that includes big-box stores such as Home Depot, BJ’s Warehouse, Ashley Furniture Homestore, and Dick’s Sporting Goods — has a lot going for it in terms of location.
Close to Universal and Disney theme parks, it’s the largest open-air retail center in the area and has highly visible positioning along Interstate 4, which has 185,000 vehicles per day.
It also sits near the 1.2 million-square-foot Mall at Millenia, which features Bloomingdales, Neiman-Marcus and a number of high-end fashion retailers. With estimated sales of $1,400 per square feet, Mall at Millenia ranks as one of the top 10 most productive retail assets in the United States, according to Green Street.