Summary from the February 21 issue of the Miami Herald:
- Mall will soon demolish its existing food court to build a new three-story wing of stores and a parking garage of up to seven levels tall.
- Turnberry Associates, got the go-ahead from the Aventura City Commission earlier this month, and expects to begin construction by the end of the year.
- 241,000 sf expansion will be constructed on the current food court site, near the JCPenney store. The parking garage could include as many as 1,400 spaces.
- The Aventura Mall already is Florida’s largest mall and one of the nation’s biggest, with 2.7 million square feet of floor space. That makes it the nation’s 16th largest, according to Mall Directory of America; by other measures, it comes in as the third largest. It also is one of the top five highest grossing malls in the country in terms of sales per square foot, according to Turnberry.
- the mall will create an enclosed transportation facility for buses on the ground floor of the new parking deck. “The bus stops are currently at five to six locations around the mall and are not that convenient to some people,” Aventura City Manager Eric Soroka said. “It is not an ideal situation as far as … mixing the pedestrian and motor vehicle traffic. This will allow all traffic from … buses to go into one consolidated place, which will be safer and … more convenient for people to use mass transit to get to the mall.”
- Aventura is currently reviewing a traffic impact study submitted by Turnberry, said Joanne Carr, Aventura’s community development director.
From Miami Today News
- three-story, 241,000-square-foot retail wing and a seven-level parking garage would be the mall’s second major expansion since 2008.
- Wikipedia ranks it third with 2.7 million square feet of retail space behind the Mall of America outside Minneapolis and the King of Prussia Mall outside Philadelphia. The proposed addition would push Aventura Mall into the No. 2 spot above the King of Prussia Mall.
- Proposed retail wing would be between the JCPenney and Macy’s department stores
- The proposed garage would have about 1,400 parking spaces and feature a “transit facility” for buses, shuttle vans and taxis.
- If the final plan meets current zoning requirements for the site, it will only have to undergo an administrative review by city departments and their consultants. If a zoning variance is needed, it would need to be approved by a vote of a city board or boards, Ms. Carr said.
- The expansion plan was submitted to the city at about the same time the mall’s owners had its mortgage raised by $770 million to be refinanced at $1.2 billion. The loan was sold to investors as part of a commercial mortgage-backed securities trust, the South Florida Business Journal reported, but the story did not mention the proposed expansion or whether the two are related.
- The mall was renovated in 2006 and expanded in 2008. The 2008 expansion cost about $125 million and included construction of a two-story, 167,000-square-foot Nordstrom department store. The project also included a three-level retail wing and a three-story parking garage. Prior to that, Aventura Mall was expanded and repositioned, doubling its size in 1997.
- According to Fitch Ratings, Aventura Mall’s tenants generated sales of about $1.4 billion in 2012. The firm said the mall draws about 28 million visits a year, making it the nation’s second-most visited mall behind the Mall of America.
