Retail Anchors Opening at London Square

HomeGoods, a home fashion and accessories outlet, is now open at London Square with Ross soon to follow. In addition, Costco will be opening May 30.

London Square is a 450,000 square foot shopping center that is located two miles south of Kendall Drive on the corner of SW 137th Avenue and 120th Street. This area has a population of over 370,000 in a 5 mile radius.

Large anchor tenants include Costco, ROSS Dress for Less, T.J. Maxx and HomeGoods. Other retail location commitments include Famous Footwear, Starbucks, Party City, Qdoba Mexican Grill, Subway, Payless Shoe Source, SportClips, Great Florida Bank, GameStop, Mattress Giant, Five Guys Burger & Fries, Panda Express, Wachovia Bank, Intercredit Bank and Miami Children’s Hospital.

Carina's Stone-Fired Pizza, an Italian-style restaurant specializing in stone-fired pizza with sit-down service and Sergio's, a family-style Latin restaurant will provide much needed restaurant choices for this area.

London Square was built on a 40 acre vacant land parcel on the NW corner of a section outlined many years ago by Miami-Dade county for industrial use. It was the site of U-pic strawberry fields for many years while it was owned by a gentleman named Dr. London (hence the name London Square.) It was one of the largest undeveloped parcels of land in this area for many years. This arial photo shows section 14 (640 acres of land) and the 40 acres when it was still vacant at the bottom left hand corner.

Businesses React to Changing Economy

The latest trend in our commercial real estate market is a move toward smaller spaces as some businesses increase their cost cutting efforts. Some business owners are downsizing into smaller warehouses and offices until their business picks up. Other factors changing our market are rising rent prices in other office markets and high gas prices. These new conditions are providing companies incentive to relocate to where their employees live.

According to CBRE's latest quarterly market report "More tenants are considering moving from Coral Gables and the Central Business District (CBD) as rental rates have increased over the past several years. More companies are looking at Airport West and the eastern portion of the Kendall Submarket as alternatives."

In addition to influencing factors from other markets, we are now seeing local landlords beginning to relent on their sale and lease prices in an effort to stand out from the growing inventory. As a result of the lower lease prices (for warehouses in particular) the market is starting to absorb the 600-1,500 sq. ft. units, although the inventory remains relatively high.

New Retail Center Coming Soon

There is a new retail center that will be breaking ground on the corner of SW 131st Street and 137th Avenue in front of the new Holiday Inn Express. Pineland Retail Center will include 31,000 sq. ft of ground floor retail space and 18,000 sq. ft. of 2nd floor office space.

The center will also have locations for a couple of restaurants and a possible bank site. Retail bays will start at 1,200 sq. ft. The center should be ready for occupancy in the Summer of 2010.