Mall giant bets big on Brickell City Centre, spending half-billion on retail complex

Brickell City Centre’s mall, home to the luxury stores and fine dining restaurants that have built upon the neighborhood’s upscale identity, has been sold to a new owner.

Swire Properties, the firm that developed Brickell City Centre, sold the mall and the parking garage under it to Simon Property Group, a company known for investing in retail complexes across the country. Business publications said that Simon paid upward of $500 million, with Bloomberg reporting a $512 million purchase price and Reuters citing a price tag of up to $548 million.

For now, there’s no indication that the sale will result in any major changes for shoppers.

Since its completion in 2016, when rapper Pitbull cut the ribbon at Brickell City Centre’s opening, the mixed-use complex has been a cornerstone of Brickell’s rapid transformation. In total, the mall’s four floors make up about 500,000 square feet of retail space rented out to over 90 businesses. The open-air shopping center is home to the likes of Saks Fifth Avenue, Sephora, Apple and Lululemon, among other various other stores, restaurants and entertainment venues.

Simon owns shopping malls across the country and previously owned a 25% stake in Brickell City Centre’s retail side before acquiring the rest, along with the complex’s parking garages. The shopping-focused real estate firm has recently been expanding in South Florida. Just this month, Simon bought a closed Sears outlet in Palm Beach County and a JCPenney inside Kendall’s Dadeland Mall.

While many have already declared the death of the American mall, Simon appears to be investing all the more heavily into retail complexes. In a statement concerning the Brickell City Centre sale Friday, the company said its properties “provide community gathering places for millions of people every day and generate billions in annual sales.”

Swire, a Hong Kong-based developer with a headquarters in Miami, has several other investments in the area, including two luxury towers under construction on Brickell Key. Swire indicated that proceeds from the mall’s sale would go toward the financing of other development projects.