News
New Osceola mall owner invests in $10M revamp
By Anjali Fluker
Senior Staff Writer - Orlando Business Journal
The Canadian firm busy developing the new $100 million Hard Rock Hotel & Cafe in Daytona Beach has another project — smaller, yet pretty significant — in Kissimmee.
Toronto-based real estate investment firmBayshore Capital Inc.’s related Vine Street Shoppes LP last summer bought the 402,000-square-foot former Osceola Square Mall for $16.5 million and renamed it Plaza del Sol, to make it more of a destination for Central Florida's growing Hispanic population.
Bayshore Capital took a look at the demographics, and with the Orlando-Kissimmee area being one of the fastest-growing major Latino markets in the nation — and the property being right in the middle of that demographic — the firm decided this was a great chance to take.
“I can’t argue with the numbers,” said Andrew Brown, president of Bayshore Capital. “This was definitely an underserved market.”
Besides the property purchase, the firm is spending an additional $10 million on revamping the property to include more elements that would attract Latin businesses and shoppers, including:
- A 48,000-square-foot “Grand Mart” full-service grocery catering to Hispanic communities. The firm is seeking approvals on the buildout for that.
- A 25,000-square-foot “Mercado” Latin Village, catering to the trend of micro-retailing and/or incubator space with 315 showcase booths for independent, growing businesses. The first phase of the Latin Village is set to debut next month and in all, it will total about 70,000 square feet of space.
- Signing new tenants like Fallas, a growing discount retailer that leased 16,000 square feet of space
- Seeking tenants for traditional in-line mall space ranging from medical office to professional services to shops and restaurants.
“The mall was an incredibly well-maintained facility, it had a great location and strong crankers like Ross Dress for Less, Burlington Coat Factory, Planet Fitness and then things like Florida Technical College as strong non-retail tenants,” Brown said, adding that the property was about 67 percent occupied at the time of the sale. “The rest of the mall was struggling because a lot of in-line tenants had vacated because of competition from new centers like The Loop.
“But the anchors were doing very well. We thought it had to be a great way to reposition the mall, to take advantage of what’s here, but not compete with the lifestyle centers popping up around.”
Orlando-based Johnson-Laux Construction LLC is the project general contractor, and Equity Inc. in Orlando is handling third-party leasing, while Arturo Adonay is the in-house representative handling leasing for the Latin Village.
Plaza del Sol will host a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the local business community to debut the first phase of the Latin Village on June 18, while a grand opening festival will be on June 21 and is open to the public.
To find information on our Plaza Del Sol Investment Click Here
