F45 Training
The fitness studio opened May 29 at the Uptown Boca development. The studio occupies 2,220 square feet within the retail portion of the project at 9658 Glades Road in Boca Raton.

Dollar Tree
This chain is slated to open a store at Turtle Crossing Shopping Center in Coral Springs. The location will be in 10,000 square feet previously occupied by Tuesday Morning.

Crunch Fitness
The gym chain opened May 29 at 4001 W. Commercial Blvd. in Tamarac. The 38,000-square-foot location includes 15,000 square feet of cardio and strength training equipment. It’s the third Crunch Fitness in Broward County.

Wesloft
The home furnishing store debuted May 27 at Palm Beach Outlets, 1751 Palm Beach Lakes Blvd. in West Palm Beach. The store occupies 3,000 square feet.

Anatomy
The gym concept opened May 26 at Regatta Harbor, a mixed-use development that includes a marina at 3385 Pan American Drive in Miami’s Coconut Grove. The 15,000-square-foot Anatomy is the development’s first retail tenant to open.

REI Co-op
Outdoor retail chain REI signed a lease for 25,000 square feet in downtown Palm Beach Gardens. Expected to open in spring 2022, it will be REI’s second store in South Florida and its sixth in the state.

Experts predicted a fire sale that never came. Why not?
In the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, experts predicted a tsunami of hotel property sales at steep discounts nationwide – including South Florida. But 14 months later, their predictions haven’t come to pass. Hotel sales in the tricounty region didn’t reach an abnormal pace, and prices never dipped to the lows once anticipated, said Ahmed Kabani, senior VP of investments at the Kabani Hotel Group with Marcus & Millichap in Miami. “I felt that a lot of companies would come and pick up distressed property in a short time,” Kabani said. “Honestly, none of that happened.” That’s in large part because the region’s hotels have bounced back faster than elsewhere in the U.S., with average occupancy above 70% in all three counties since March, according to data from hotel analytics company STR. Meanwhile, the average occupancy nationwide was considerably lower, at 55% in March. As a result, local hotel owners have been more willing to hold on to their properties, rather than sell them at discounts, Kabani said. He recently worked with a potential seller who listed a hotel in Palm Beach County for $11 million. An offer came in at $10.5 million, but the seller was unwilling to close at that price, he said. Like many investment groups, Coral Gables-based Driftwood Capital gathered funds to buy the influx of discounted hospitality real estate that was supposed to be on the market in the second half of 2020, CEO Carlos Rodriguez Sr. said. “Quite frankly, not as much as we expected came online,” he said. Most South Florida hotel properties haven’t been discounted more than 20%, and the supply appears to be underwhelming. But properties are also trading quietly, furthering the perception of a short supply. Rodriguez said Driftwood has purchased two hotels so far this year that were never publicly listed: one in Pennsylvania and another in Virginia. “There have been deals, but you have to have the relationships and the money available to move quickly,” he said. Sellers are looking for cash deals whenever available so they can close quickly, Rodriguez said. What’s more, traditional lenders haven’t been as eager to finance hotel deals as they were before the pandemic, said John Lancet, senior managing director in the Miami office of hospitality consulting firm HVS. He says lenders are limiting exposure to hotel assets in the short term.

Mark your calendar: June 26
Miami-based Celebrity Cruises’ Celebrity Edge is scheduled to depart from Port Everglades on June 26 for the first paid passenger cruise since March 2020. The company was able to get swift approval from the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention by requiring that all passengers and crew be fully vaccinated for Covid-19.