Ocean Drive Magazine | Bringing Business to The Beach
Over the past 15 years, residential developers have come to Miami in droves to build us luxurious places to live. All the while, Michael Comras has been bringing fabulous places to shop. The owner of The Comras Company – a full service commercial-real-estate organization – controls about 125,000 square feet of ground-level retail space between Collins Avenue and Lincoln Road and has leased several-hundred-thousand square feet of property in South Miami, Coconut Grove and Miami Beach. Although Comras has built and sold numerous retail and office buildings and parking spaces and leased to everyone from True Religion (opening in December) to Zara, his own property portfolio includes the buildings on Collins that house the Gap, Nine West, Sunglass Hut, Polo, Sephora and Levi’s, as well as the northern block of Lincoln Road from Michigan to Lenox Avenue (from the Gap to Pottery Barn). “For so long, everyone has been all about condos, condos, condos, and I’m just doing my own thing,’ Comras says. “I’m finding needs and filling them – whether it’s creating parking or offices or finding great locations for retailers. When I look back over the past 13 years, I can go kick the bricks of a lot of these buildings and say, ‘This wouldn’t be here but for me!’ It’s pretty cool.”
“All the attention is turning to commercial. Tenants are lining up.”
OCEAN DRIVE: You have been such a big part of how Miami Beach looks today, but commercial news is often overshadowed by residential development.
MICHAEL COMRAS:
All the attention is turning to commercial. No one has talked about all the retail I’ve worked on. It has been off the radar screen, yet everyone has had the benefit of being able to enjoy the new shopping experiences. Many of the condos have been built on spec, but the demand for retail is real. Tenants are lining up to lease every bit of space. Of course that has brought (leasing) rates up tremendously.
You come from a real-estate background. How did your father get started?
The Comras Company is a real-estate company specializing in commercial and retail development, leasing, management and sales. The company was founded by my father in New York City in 1973 and is now headquartered in Miami Beach. Since opening our present offices in 1992, we have developed and leased about two million square feet of Class-A office, specialty-retail and entertainment-oriented projects.
Did you intend to do the same business in Miami?
In the early ‘90s, as South Beach began to gain international attention, I recognized the need for upscale retailing. There were three Payless ShoeSource stores, two Eckerd pharmacies, a Woolworths and a lot of cheesy T-shirt shops. Ocean Drive was abuzz with the outdoor cafés and beautiful people walking the streets. It was only a matter of time before the national retailers would converge. We identified Collins Avenue from Fifth Street to Ninth Street as the perfect venue, with its collection of boutique art deco structures, to locate the tenants. This led to the conception of the Collins Avenue Fashion District. Since then, the area has become one of the most sought-after locations for top designers and retailers. Tenants whom I have represented or developed properties for include Polo Ralph Lauren, Adidas, Levi’s, True Religion, Club Monaco, Gap, Zara, Puma, Sunglass Hut, Sephora, M•A•C Cosmetics, Diesel, Quiksilver and Nine West. One of the first deals done was with the Gap. At the time, the deal was made at $35 per square foot; rents along Collins were approximately $20 per square foot. They wanted to cast me in bronze for achieving such a high rent. This was really a turning point for Miami Beach. Today rents in the area are exceeding $100 per square foot.
How has the company’s focus evolved since you moved to Miami?
When I moved here from New York in 1992, I saw a buzz around Ocean Drive. People from around the world were starting to pay attention to it. Through my experience leasing and managing buildings in New York, I knew the retailers follow the entertainment, the restaurants and the cafés. Once [potential retail tenants] came down here and saw the vibe, the ocean and what a great resort city this was, they said, ‘How do we get to be here.’ Of course they all wanted to be on Ocean Dive at first, but the City had been smart in its planning: Because they knew national retailers can always pay whatever it takes to get those locations, the City restricted things a bit so the cafés could flourish. It would have made sense for these retailers to set up shop on Washington Avenue, but the street felt too wide and didn’t have the same boutique feel.
“The deal was made at $35 per square foot. Today rents in the area are exceeding $100 per square foot.”
How did you get such a great mix of stores on Collins Avenue and informally develop this Fifth to Ninth Street shopping strip?
Tony Goldman and I are responsible for bringing in most of the major retailers here. Because so few landlords own properties on Collins Avenue, we’re able to control the tenancy; we have an unwritten agreement amongst ourselves to only bring in great tenants that will really enhance the street. Although Ball Harbour Shops has the exclusives for may high-end retailers, we can go after another tier – stores like Nicole Miller, AG Adriano Goldschmied, which is coming over here next year, and Replay, which is taking over the corner of Ninth Street.
When did retailers start considering Lincoln Road?
As Collins continued to flourish and space was difficult to come by, I set my sights on the remerchandising of Lincoln Road – formerly known as the ‘Fifth Avenue of the South.’ I strategized to successfully integrate national retailers in with the more eclectic local boutiques, galleries and cafés. This has created one of the finest examples of a ‘lifestyle center’ in the country.
Tell me about your first Miami projects.
I built two buildings for Spec’s, one on Fifth Street, but the first one was in Coconut Grove. I had never built a building in my life. As part of a joint venture, part of my job was to go finance and build this building. So I took my plans to the bank, told them about my tenant, Spec’s, and asked them for a loan. They said, ‘Yes!’ I said ‘Oh, this is great! Just like that?’ They didn’t ask me if I had ever built a building before. That’s good, because the answer would have been no. I’d financed, leased and managed buildings, but I’d never built one.
How do you ‘assemble the property’?
A lot of my work is dealing with the major national tenants and some of the better-quality local tenants. Today, when you pick up the phone and call a retailer anywhere in the country or anywhere in the world and say ‘I’m calling from South Beach, and I have a location for you, ’ they’re going to take your call. You’re calling from one of the fashion capitals of the world. It used to be New York, Chicago and L.A., and now it’s New York, Chicago, L.A. and Miami. Because it’s the gateway to South America, everyone wants to have flagship stores here to cater to the South American clientele. It’s usually the first step a company makes in expanding there.
What was one of your most creative deals?
Locating Banana Republic in the former historic Chase Federal Bank building. By coordinating the preservation efforts with the City of Miami Beach, I was able to successfully merge historic preservation with contemporary retailing.
You were also a partner in two office buildings, The Lincoln (at 17th Street and Michigan Avenue) and Lincoln Place (at 16th Street and Washington Avenue), back when the office-space market was soft. How did these projects come about?
In 1998, the City of Miami Beach put out a Request for Proposals [RFP] for developers to come up with creative solutions to the parking problems the city was enduring. They wanted only parking and no additional uses. We had so much entertainment on the weekends and evenings and no place to park. At the same time I couldn’t find 2,000 square feet for my own office – all the entertainment companies took it all. It occurred to me that an office building at 16th and Washington on top of the garage would be a great daytime demand generator for a parking garage that would otherwise be empty. It would also serve to fill another need of the city – to provide Class-A office space to a very tight market.
What about other segments of the business?
We represent clients like Quiksilver, the Gap and many tenants and brokers from around the country. When they have a requirement in Miami generally I’ll get the call. They’ll say, ‘Michael, I have Steve Madden – can you help us find a location?’ I’ll put together a plan for how I think it should happen.
Describe the business process.
For example, we created a joint venture with Scott Robbins and LNR to develop The Lincoln, the second large mixed-use building to be built in the Lincoln Road area. I was in charge of getting the retail leased. One of the spaces was extremely large and very difficult to rent. I wanted to cut up the space to make it smaller, but because the space was so deep, the units would have been very dark and narrow, sort of like a bowling alley! One day I was speaking to a broker in San Francisco, I mentioned that I was looking for an entertainment-oriented tenant for a large, deep, challenging retail space. I asked him what was hot out there, and he told me about Lucky Strike, which had just opened up in Hollywood. I asked my assistant to get the name of the guy who ran the company. When I spoke to him, he told me he was just in South Beach with two guys looking for property.
“Everybody wants to have flagship stores here.”
Describe the deal you recently reached with Shaquille O’Neal.
I am working on the South Florida expansion of the 24 Hour Fitness Shaq Sports clubs. 24 Hour is an incredible company with over 380 health clubs around the country. In South Florida, Shaq is a joint-venture partner, and there are plans to open more than 20 clubs. One of the deals we are doing is at Met 3 in downtown Miami. Whole Foods is going on the ground floor and 24 Hour Fitness is taking 30,000 square feet for a super high-end club. Shaq fell in love with the project, and now he is a spokesperson and investor in it.
And you have a deal with Alonzo Mourning?
Another interesting deal we recently did was in downtown Coral Gables off Miracle Mile. Alonzo Morning is a partner in a project called 55 Merrick Way. He wanted to open a 20,000-square-foot fitness club in the building. I approached his group. I said, ‘Look, we’re opening these 24 Hour Fitness clubs everywhere with Shaq: We’re going to Homestead, Kendall, Doral, Hialeah, Miramar, Pembroke Pines, everywhere. Rather than you opening up a [competing] club, why don’t you let us lease the space from you?’ so now Alonzo is the landlord and Shaq with 24 Hour Fitness will be the tenant.
You recently brought both BCBG and Apple to Lincoln Road. What are their rents like these days?
Recently I bought the 24 Collection building and brought in BCBG Max Azria to take the place and brought the Apple Store in to take the former Moseley’s space. Those Apple and BCBG deals are $90 to $100 a square foot. Apple did the whole façade renovation and restoration for themselves.
How did you get Apple to come to Lincoln Road?
It is a very different Apple Store from the exterior. It’s the first nonprototypical storefront for Apple in the country. Typically when you see an Apple Store, it’s an all glass storefront with black panels and the Apple logo. I had been trying to open a store with them somewhere in Miami Beach for five years. I proposed the Moseley’s space – a flat, simple storefront with all glass and a very simple keystone façade. I thought it was as simple as you could get for a façade in this area; It didn’t have any ornate details, and I thought they could ‘Apple-ize’ it pretty easily. The store is a high-tech-oriented concept, and it needed to be very contemporary. The building turned out amazing. It’s 15,000 square feet, and we’re building 23 condos in the back, which will add another 20,000 square feet. This will be one of my first ventures into small-scale residential. We are launching sales of the Lincoln Road condos this month, and prices start at about $800,000.