Cervera R.E. Ventures has paid $17 million for the Twin Towers Shopping Center in Hialeah, a 36,575-square-foot retail plaza at 4516 West 12th Avenue anchored by a major senior healthcare provider. The purchase price works out to $465 per square foot for the property, which sits at West 12th Avenue and West 46th Street and includes 15 suites housing a restaurant, medical providers and other service-oriented businesses.
The deal, first reported by The Real Deal, closed at a capitalization rate just shy of 6 percent, a figure that typically signals low financial risk and stable cash flow for South Florida retail buyers. The seller was an affiliate of CD Group led by Maurice Cayon, which had owned the property since paying $2.9 million for it in 1999. Marcus & Millichap represented the seller in the transaction, with Senior Managing Directors Drew Kristol and Kirk Olson working the deal.
Javier Cervera, president and CEO of C-REV, said his prior relationship with the seller allowed the firm to negotiate before the property ever hit the open market. He described Twin Towers as a natural fit for the company's portfolio, citing its small retail spaces, service-oriented tenant mix and proximity to other shopping centers C-REV already owns.
Las Mercedes Anchors the Plaza
The shopping center's largest tenant is Las Mercedes Medical Center, which leases 12,800 square feet at Twin Towers. C-REV has already negotiated a long-term lease renewal with the healthcare provider, locking in the anchor that underpins much of the property's income.
Las Mercedes traces its roots to 1971, when it opened in Miami as Clinica Las Mercedes. The provider has since grown into a network of 26 South Florida facilities serving more than 22,000 senior members, an expansion accelerated by its October 2024 acquisition of Pasteur and Wellmax Medical Centers from Elevance Health, according to a PR Newswire release. Law firm Holland & Knight represented Las Mercedes in that acquisition, which expanded the Medicare-focused provider's real estate footprint across South Florida, per a statement from the firm.
Betting on a Tight Retail Market
Twin Towers was built in 1978 and carries average rents of $35 per square foot, a figure that tracks closely with broader submarket trends. Cushman & Wakefield market reporting put the Hialeah retail submarket's vacancy rate at a razor-thin 1.3 percent, with average asking rents around $36.97 per square foot, as of the fourth quarter of 2025. That scarcity of available space has helped push investor demand for Hialeah retail properties even as prices climb.
The city's broader economic momentum has not gone unnoticed. WalletHub ranked Hialeah No. 4 overall among 100 large U.S. cities in its 2026 study of the best places to start a business, and second nationwide for its business environment specifically. Cervera pointed to that recognition as part of the thesis behind the acquisition, noting Hialeah's standing as a hub for small-business activity.
Financing and a Prior Refinancing Win
C-REV secured an acquisition loan for the deal from U.S. Century Bank at 50 percent loan-to-value. The Doral-based lender, founded in 2002, is one of the largest community banks in Miami-Dade County, with assets exceeding $2.2 billion and a loan portfolio weighted heavily toward commercial real estate.
The Twin Towers purchase follows a similar playbook C-REV used at Ready Listo, a 74,400-square-foot property at 3800 West 12th Avenue that the firm acquired in 2018 for $12.7 million. At acquisition, 90 percent of Ready Listo's tenants were on month-to-month leases; C-REV signed new leases and raised the property's annual income from just under $900,000 to $1.8 million. The firm went on to refinance Ready Listo, returning 41 percent of its investors' original equity, and now values the property at $22.65 million, roughly $9.91 million above its purchase price.
A Family Real Estate Legacy
Cervera comes from one of South Florida's most recognized real estate families. His father, Javier Cervera Sr., emigrated from Cuba in 1961 and helped pioneer high-rise residential zoning along Miami's Brickell Avenue, while his mother, Alicia Cervera Sr., co-founded the family's real estate business, according to The Real Deal. While his sisters lead the residential brokerage Cervera Real Estate, Javier Cervera Jr. runs C-REV as a separate investment firm focused on commercial assets.
C-REV, founded in 2005, holds retail, industrial, office and multifamily properties along with land assemblages throughout South Florida, with a retail focus in Coral Gables, Cutler Bay, Kendall and Miami in addition to Hialeah. The firm operates from a 4,000-square-foot headquarters in Coral Gables that it purchased for $3.4 million in 2022 and renovated for $1 million after relocating from Brickell to accommodate staff growth.
In recent years, C-REV has shifted capital away from multifamily holdings and toward neighborhood shopping centers, including its $25.3 million purchase of the 83,700-square-foot Tropical Park Plaza near Westchester in 2022 and its $20 million sale of a 90-unit Miami airport-area apartment complex in 2023. Cervera said the previous owner had already made improvements to Twin Towers, so the firm does not expect to undertake major renovation work there. The company is now pursuing additional acquisitions across the tri-county area and has another deal in the works near the Twin Towers site, though further details on that transaction have not been disclosed.
