Baptist Health Buys Former Kohl's Store in Coconut Creek for $53.5M
Kohl's bought the 8.2-acre site for $14.8 million in 2008. Eighteen years later a health system is the one writing the check, not another retailer.
Baptist Health South Florida has paid $53.5 million for the former Kohl’s department store at 6950 North State Road 7 in Coconut Creek, taking down a 92,700-square-foot big-box building on 8.2 acres at $577 a square foot. Kohl’s still operates the store today, and a Baptist Health spokesperson told local press that plans for the site are still being evaluated.
Why it matters
This is an owner-user deal, not a retail-to-retail flip. Broward’s biggest hospital system is buying a dead-mall-adjacent box outright rather than leasing space or building new, which is a different signal than a REIT or a grocery chain backfilling the same footprint. Health systems have been the most reliable buyer of struggling big-box retail nationally because the floor plates, parking ratios and highway visibility that made a store work for Kohl’s work just as well for urgent care, imaging or outpatient surgery. For landlords and brokers tracking north Broward retail, it confirms that a large-format vacancy on State Road 7 does not have to sit empty or get chopped into small-bay space. It can go to a single institutional user with the balance sheet to hold and redevelop on its own timeline. That is a site-selection data point for anyone with big-box exposure along the same corridor, in Miami and the broader South Florida market.
The numbers
Baptist Health paid $53.5 million, or $577 per square foot, for the 92,700-square-foot building and 8.2-acre site. Kohl’s bought the property for $14.8 million in 2008, soon after the store was built. That gap works out to a $38.7 million gain, a 261% increase over the 18-year hold, well ahead of general South Florida land inflation over the same span.
What’s next
Baptist Health has not disclosed a redevelopment plan, and the Kohl’s store remains open for now. The next marker to watch is whether Baptist files site plans or permits with Coconut Creek that would signal a medical conversion versus a straight land bank, and whether the deal pulls other health systems or medical-office developers to scout the same big-box retail corridor for similar takedowns.