Publix Buys Its Landlord Out of Airpark Plaza for $83.3M

Publix has stopped being only the tenant at Airpark Plaza. The grocer paid $83.3 million for the shopping center at 5705 NW 7th St near Miami International Airport, buying out its own landlord, First Washington Realty.

The center holds 204,740 square feet. The price works out to about $407 a square foot, and it is the largest check in this story by a wide margin: the property last sold in 2008 for $32.9 million.

Why it matters

A grocer that owns the dirt under its own store sets its own terms. It no longer negotiates renewals, rent bumps or relocation clauses with a landlord, and it controls what sits next door. Other tenants at Airpark include Burlington and Alain’s Design Furniture, and both now have Publix as the party that decides their lease terms.

For South Florida shopping-center owners, the signal is that the anchor can be a competing bidder. A buyer pricing a grocery-anchored center has to account for the possibility that the anchor itself will outbid an investor to take the asset off the market. That tightens the pool of sellers willing to trade and may raise the price of the few centers that do.

For buyers, the same dynamic cuts the other way. Institutional landlords chasing grocery-anchored income, the type of buyer we tracked in the Brixmor deal for three Miami grocery centers, now compete with a tenant that has a lower cost of capital and a reason beyond yield to own.

The numbers

• Price: $83.3 million, per the brief and The Real Deal’s report.
• Size: 204,740 square feet, about $407 per square foot.
• Prior sale: $32.9 million in 2008, so the property now trades at roughly 2.5 times that figure.
• Seller: First Washington Realty, the landlord Publix bought out.

We tried to confirm the sale through the Miami-Dade property appraiser, but the search tool is not reachable as a static record, so the deed details remain unconfirmed on our side. The price and prior-sale figures come from The Real Deal.

What’s next

Watch whether Publix repeats this at other South Florida centers it anchors. Each purchase removes a grocery-anchored asset from the investment market, and the next landlord approached by a Publix real estate team will know what the grocer is willing to pay.

Tenants at Airpark should expect the next lease cycle to be negotiated with the grocer as owner. For wider context on where buyers are spending, see our South Florida market coverage.