TAMPA —
The owners of Centro Ybor are ready to sell, or at least find out what the complex is really worth on the open market.
Officials with the company that specializes in acquiring, improving and selling retail complexes said Thursday they will start a bidding process to attract potential buyers for the complex in the heart of Ybor City.
“This is a good success story,” said Mike Milano, a real estate broker with Colliers International who is marketing the property. “This was a group who came in and bought a property that had challenges, and brought in good office, retail and restaurants.”
Milano said a sale should not change the overall nature of a complex that has at times been the heart of the entertainment scene in Ybor City. For many, Centro also stands as an example of the risk to taxpayers associated with government-backed development projects.
Now is the time to explore a deal, Milano said, because the complex is more than 90 percent occupied, and the overall market for commercial real estate has improved enough to spark new deals.
City of Tampa Urban Development Manager Bob McDonaugh suggested another motivation as well.
Officially, the mall owner is an entity called CMJ Centro Ybor LLC, which is partly owned by the real estate firm MJ Wilkow Ltd. of Chicago. McDonaugh said Wilkow may end up being the highest bidder for the mall, and use the bid process to take full ownership of the property.
“When you have a partnership like that, and it’s time to dissolve the partnership, you have to take the assets to the marketplace,” McDonaugh said. “That’s when you have the option of selling or buying it at the market price.”
The brokers will hold a four-week bidding process, then vet proposals, and hope to have a deal complete by year’s end.
The complex stretches more than 216,000 square feet in total — twice the size of a typical Super Walmart — and includes movie theaters, several restaurants, office space, salons and a pair of two-story restaurant spaces that face Seventh Avenue.
Tampa Bay Brewing Co. is one of the major anchors of the site, and co-owner Vicki Doble said she’s thrilled with how the area has improved.
“When we first moved in here in 2006 it was a huge chance,” Doble said. “At first, I did not like what the owners were doing, because I thought ‘Oh, no. It’s going to be an office complex.’ But it’s really been a great mix and really improved the crowd.”
Originally built in 2000 and designed as mainly an entertainment and shopping complex, Centro Ybor offered some of the most historic urban spaces in the city, with brick walkways and ornate bridges that stretch over the streetcar line on Eighth Avenue.
At times, the complex thrived, with a packed social scene around its shops. MJ took over the complex in 2006 and saw its share of struggles there, and some national brands moved out, including Victoria’s Secret. Urban Outfitters relocated to International Plaza mall.
To reposition the complex, managers started recruiting companies for office space, and several took space in areas renovated with an urban feel, including the C.H. Robinson logistics provider who moved into the former Urban Outfitters space.
Part of a second-story movie complex also was renovated into office space.
Several restaurants have cycled through a two-story building on Seventh Avenue, including Big City Tavern, and L’Olivier Restaurant and Cabaret. Recently, Carne ChopHouse moved into the ground-floor space and Florida Business Interiors moved into a second-floor space. Meanwhile, other restaurants still thrive, including Hamburger Mary’s Bar Grille which has an occasionally raunchy drag queen theme, and Tampa Bay Brewing Co., which brews many beers on-site.
As for government support, the city of Tampa guarantees a $7.84 million loan that helped finance construction of the complex. The city now pays about $598,000 a year to service the loan, partly offset by about $80,000 in property taxes the complex pays back.
Those payments would continue until 2018, McDonaugh said, regardless of any change in ownership of the mall.