2:22 PM
Humari news
A Memphis-based commercial real estate firm is exchanging one high-profile tenant in Miami for another, from the U.S. Southern Command headquarters to the Miami Herald.
The Miami Herald Media Company has signed a lease for the 158,000-square-foot building SMPO Properties built and opened in Doral in 1997 for $40 million.
The newspaper will move its business and news staffs of more than 700 people 12 miles inland from its longtime headquarters on the Atlantic in Downtown Miami to the affluent Doral suburb.
SMPO, owned by Oscar Seelbinder, built the building. GPA-I, a special-purpose business entity created for the project, took ownership and leased it to the Southern Command until the military moved out last August.
The Southern Command oversees military activity in South and Central America during crisis situations and disasters.
Seelbinder is also a partner in GPA-I with fellow Memphians including Jerry Sklar, an attorney; Ron Sklar, a builder-developer; and John H. Montgomery, who splits his time between Memphis and Chicago.
The Herald had been hunting for a new home. Newspaper publisher McClatchy Co., which owns the Miami Herald, sold the Herald’s seaside headquarters eight months ago for $236 million with the agreement the paper could stay rent-free for up to two years.
The Herald signed a 15-year lease for the two-story office building and nine acres. GPA also sold an adjacent six acres where the Herald will build a 120,000-square-foot production facility.
The Miami Herald lease isn’t the only big deal landed recently by SMPO, which is headquartered at 5858 Ridgeway Center Parkway in East Memphis.
Just before the Herald lease, SMPO completed a deal with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to lease for 20 years a 45,000-square-foot laboratory building in Los Angeles.
“It’s the second-largest lab the USDA will have in the United States,” Seelbinder said. “The value of the lab is more valuable than the property leased to the Herald.”
SMPO was founded in 1984. It’s a comprehensive commercial real estate firm and what Seelbinder describes as a “merchant builder.’’
“You build things and then you sell them,” Seelbinder explained.
It began by building and leasing out post office buildings. SMPO has built more than 150 of them.
But the company also has built a CVS pharmacy, AutoZone stores, four FedEx facilities ranging from 115,000 to 575,000 square feet, and Captain D’s restaurants.
SMPO has sold the vast majority of the nearly 200 properties it has built over the years across 40 states, Seelbinder said.
“We only have a couple left,” he said. “It’s difficult to hold on when people offer prices. In merchant building, you put up property that’s income-producing. In essence, somebody will pay us more than we feel it’s worth and we sell it.”
In addition to developing, SMPO is a commercial real estate broker of government leased and credit-rated tenant transactions. The combined value of its brokered deals over the years exceeds $500 million.
SMPO also manages property, and as SMPO Financial, LLC, it even structures commercial real estate loans of $750,000 to more than $100 million.
Despite its successes and longevity, SMPO doesn’t seem that well known.
“There’s never been an importance placed on being in the public eye,’’ Seelbinder said.
“The primary business we do has more to do with public bids to government, and relationships with credit tenants. It just never has seemed important to have publicity.”
The Miami Herald Media Company has signed a lease for the 158,000-square-foot building SMPO Properties built and opened in Doral in 1997 for $40 million.
The newspaper will move its business and news staffs of more than 700 people 12 miles inland from its longtime headquarters on the Atlantic in Downtown Miami to the affluent Doral suburb.
SMPO, owned by Oscar Seelbinder, built the building. GPA-I, a special-purpose business entity created for the project, took ownership and leased it to the Southern Command until the military moved out last August.
The Southern Command oversees military activity in South and Central America during crisis situations and disasters.
Seelbinder is also a partner in GPA-I with fellow Memphians including Jerry Sklar, an attorney; Ron Sklar, a builder-developer; and John H. Montgomery, who splits his time between Memphis and Chicago.
The Herald had been hunting for a new home. Newspaper publisher McClatchy Co., which owns the Miami Herald, sold the Herald’s seaside headquarters eight months ago for $236 million with the agreement the paper could stay rent-free for up to two years.
The Herald signed a 15-year lease for the two-story office building and nine acres. GPA also sold an adjacent six acres where the Herald will build a 120,000-square-foot production facility.
The Miami Herald lease isn’t the only big deal landed recently by SMPO, which is headquartered at 5858 Ridgeway Center Parkway in East Memphis.
Just before the Herald lease, SMPO completed a deal with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to lease for 20 years a 45,000-square-foot laboratory building in Los Angeles.
“It’s the second-largest lab the USDA will have in the United States,” Seelbinder said. “The value of the lab is more valuable than the property leased to the Herald.”
SMPO was founded in 1984. It’s a comprehensive commercial real estate firm and what Seelbinder describes as a “merchant builder.’’
“You build things and then you sell them,” Seelbinder explained.
It began by building and leasing out post office buildings. SMPO has built more than 150 of them.
But the company also has built a CVS pharmacy, AutoZone stores, four FedEx facilities ranging from 115,000 to 575,000 square feet, and Captain D’s restaurants.
SMPO has sold the vast majority of the nearly 200 properties it has built over the years across 40 states, Seelbinder said.
“We only have a couple left,” he said. “It’s difficult to hold on when people offer prices. In merchant building, you put up property that’s income-producing. In essence, somebody will pay us more than we feel it’s worth and we sell it.”
In addition to developing, SMPO is a commercial real estate broker of government leased and credit-rated tenant transactions. The combined value of its brokered deals over the years exceeds $500 million.
SMPO also manages property, and as SMPO Financial, LLC, it even structures commercial real estate loans of $750,000 to more than $100 million.
Despite its successes and longevity, SMPO doesn’t seem that well known.
“There’s never been an importance placed on being in the public eye,’’ Seelbinder said.
“The primary business we do has more to do with public bids to government, and relationships with credit tenants. It just never has seemed important to have publicity.”
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