Lincoln Road CVS Building Just Sold for $30 Million

Apparently someone didn't pick up their copy of the New Yorker this week, because despite growing concerns that sea-level rise may some day in the not too distant future leave Miami Beach nearly uninhabitable, real estate on the island continues to be a hot commodity. In fact, the building that's currently home to CVS on Lincoln Road just sold for a cool $30 million.

According to the Miami Herald, the building was last bought by a Boca Raton-based real estate holding company in 1989 for just $550,000. The new buyers are apparently investment group Rockpoint Group. 

CVS, however, isn't necessarily going anywhere. The Real Deal explains the complicated lease situation. An entity known as Cathy-David Properties Ltd. bought a 99-year lease on the property when it was built in 1951. Cathy-David, which has retained the lease despite changes in ownership, in turn leases it to CVS. Under the terms, Cathy-David has been paying the owners $415,000 a year since 2011. In 2021, they'll start shelling out a yearly rent check of $425,000. The new owners could pursue an early end to the lease, but it's unclear what they plan to ultimately do with their new acquisition.

Lincoln Road real estate is, of course, popping. It's now the tenth most expensive retail street in the entire nation. Several Miami Beach institutions that called the street home for decades have been forced to relocate or close up completely in the past several years due to rising rent. More and more clothing chain stores continue to pop up. A few months ago, Spanish billionaire Amancio Ortega bought up an entire block on the road for $370 million. ArtCenter South Florida, a nonprofit, sold its longtime home for $88 million last year. Perhaps most controversial, the Miami Beach Community Church leased its courtyard to developers in a $100 million, 100-year deal. 

The CVS is located just east of where the pedestrian mall portion of the street ends. Its nearby neighbors include a 7-Eleven and a few tourist tchotchke shops. A Ross is scheduled to open up directly next door soon. So even though the block isn't the fanciest on Lincoln Road, it too is certainly hot property.

While you contemplate all of this, we'll just leave you with this choice paragraph from that New Yorker article: 

To cope with its recurrent flooding, Miami Beach has already spent something like a hundred million dollars. It is planning on spending several hundred million more. Such efforts are, in Wanless’s view, so much money down the drain. Sooner or later—and probably sooner—the city will have too much water to deal with. Even before that happens, Wanless believes, insurers will stop selling policies on the luxury condos that line Biscayne Bay. Banks will stop writing mortgages.