CLIENT NEWS: Target, Burlington open in Miami’s Sawyer’s Walk, other big retailers to follow
October 24, 2024Four retail chains and an international grocery store are set to move into a 1.5 million-square-foot project in Miami’s Overtown area near the MiamiCentral Brightline complex.
Target (NYSE: TGT), a Minneapolis-based retail corporation, just opened a 50,000-square-foot store in Block 55 at Sawyer’s Walk, a 3.4-acre mixed-use project located at 249 N.W. 6th St., less than 1,100 feet away from Brightline’s MiamiCentral station. And yesterday, New Jersey-based department store Burlington (NYSE: BURL) opened a 38,000-square-foot store at Sawyer’s Walk, said Michael Swerdlow, managing partner of SG Holdings, which developed Sawyer’s Walk.
Set to open a 10,000-square-foot store on Nov. 5 is Philadelphia-based specialty retail chain Five Below (Nasdaq: FIVE), Swerdlow said. And less than a week after that, German discount supermarket chain Aldi will open a 25,000-square-foot grocery, he added.
California-based Ross Dress for Less (Nasdaq: ROST) intends to open a 26,000-square-foot in Sawyer’s Walk by March 1, 2025, Swerdlow said.
Swerdlow said the new stores at Sawyer’s Walk will fill an affordable shopping void in the Brickell-Downtown area and bring retail in a neighborhood that is devoid of retail.
“I’m very happy about it. I’m happy to be solving the income inequality problem in Miami and I am happy to bring in retail in a place that didn’t have any,” Swerdlow said.
The SG Holdings development team–consisting of the Coconut Grove-based Swerdlow Group, Virginia-based real estate SJM Partners, and Miami affordable housing developer Alben Duffie–broke ground on Block 55 at Sawyer’s Walk in June 2021. Its 578 apartments, mainly reserved for low-income seniors, opened in July.
Sawyer’s Walk will also be home to the North American headquarters of MSC Cruises, after its parent company, MSC Group, paid $67 million for 131,129 square feet of office space within the mixed-use complex in June. Richard Sasso, MSC Cruises USA chairman, said his company should be in its new offices sometime next year.
Less than 4,000 square feet of space is available out of the approximately 200,000 square feet of retail at Sawyer’s Walk, Swerdlow added. Other retail tenants slated to move in include a Tropical Smoothie shop and a small clothing store recommended by the Southeast Overtown Park West Community Redevelopment Agency.
Regarding the absence of dining and bar options at Sawyer’s Walk, Swerdlow said: “I’m not in the business of fancy entertainment. We cater to middle-class people and we have very, very limited space.”
The project also has 1,000 parking spaces as well as public plazas, a children’s playground, and a dog park.
Sawyer’s Walk isn’t the only large scale project Swerdlow is involved with in Miami. The Swerdlow Group and AJ Capital also have a pending bid with Miami-Dade County to build a mixture of 7,513 affordable and market rate apartments in Miami’s Little River area, along with 605,562 square feet of retail space and a possible new $20 million Tri-Rail station.
