A Boston-based real estate firm has closed on its first major South Florida shopping center, paying $66.9 million for the Publix-anchored Promenade Shopping Plaza in Palm Beach Gardens. The 207,900-square-foot center at 9810 Alternate A1A sits at 98 percent occupancy, with tenants that include Planet Fitness, Ace Hardware and Goodwill alongside the recently renovated grocery store.
A Long-Held Nuveen Asset Changes Hands
The buyer, The Mount Vernon Company, is led by chairman Bruce Percelay, according to The Real Deal. The seller, Nuveen Real Estate, had owned the 22.8-acre property since April 2017, when it paid $49.25 million for the plaza when it was 97 percent occupied following a 2015 redevelopment, according to a 2017 report from The Real Deal. This latest sale, which worked out to $321 per square foot, netted Nuveen a $17.6 million gain, per the same account. Palm Beach County has assessed the plaza, first developed in 1972 and redeveloped in 2015, at $49 million this year.
Mount Vernon financed the purchase with a $35.9 million loan from Beacon Bank and says it plans to hold the shopping center long term, per its news release. JLL brokers Jorge Portela, Danny Finkle and Kim Flores represented Nuveen in the deal. The Publix anchor reopened after renovations last year, a refresh that has helped keep the center nearly fully leased.
Part Of A Bigger Capital Shift Out Of New England
The purchase marks Mount Vernon's first major shopping center acquisition in South Florida and fits a broader pattern for the 1985-founded firm, which built its original portfolio of more than 2,000 apartments, commercial properties and boutique hotels across New England before pushing into Florida commercial real estate, according to The Mount Vernon Company. A $20.685 million Publix-anchored center also sold in Jacksonville, according to Marcus & Millichap. Percelay has also been active on the disposition side closer to home, selling an empty Palm Beach lot in 2022 for $10.3 million after planning a 6,900-square-foot home there — proceeds that nearly doubled his original purchase price.
On the seller's side, the Promenade sale continues a national rebalancing for Nuveen Real Estate, which operates under Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association. In March, the firm, which is led by Bill Huffman, completed a $330 million capital raise for its U.S. Cities Retail Fund, backed by a $250 million commitment from Australia's Retail Employees Superannuation Trust, aimed at acquiring grocery-anchored retail properties nationwide, according to The Real Deal. In April, Nuveen bought the Aldi-anchored Coral Landings III in Margate for $46.3 million, or $268 per square foot — a 24 percent jump over its 2022 purchase price for that property. In late August, the firm sold the 700,000-square-foot Village Crossing power center in Skokie, Illinois, for $122 million as it continues shifting toward grocery-anchored neighborhood retail. Not every Nuveen move has gone smoothly this year; in January, the firm and Pacific Coast Capital Partners took over a 35-story office tower in Chicago's River North after landlords defaulted on a $296 million floating-rate loan issued in 2021.
Why Grocery Retail Is Outrunning The Rest Of The Market
The Promenade deal lands amid unusually tight conditions for essential retail in Palm Beach County. Retail vacancy fell to 4.0 percent in the second quarter of 2026 while asking rents climbed 3.3 percent quarter-over-quarter to $30.14 per square foot on a triple-net basis, making retail the county's top-performing commercial asset class, according to Boxwood Commercial Realty. That same quarter, Publix itself directly bought two of its own anchored centers in the county — the Fountains of Boynton Beach for $78 million and Aberdeen Square for $24 million — underscoring how fierce competition has become for grocery-anchored real estate. Grocery-anchored plazas are commanding premium valuations largely because daily-needs traffic shields landlords from the distress hitting other commercial sectors, Boxwood notes.
The Promenade property itself is 98 percent occupied. A 3.9-acre commercial outparcel next to the Promenade property, at 9840 Alternate A1A, has been listed for sale at $5.25 million since late 2020 and remained on the market as of August, per LoopNet, leaving open the possibility of future infill development beside the plaza.
The deal adds to a run of grocery and big-box shakeups across Palm Beach Gardens this year. Hoodline has reported on rent increases that pushed Winn-Dixie out of a nearby plaza.
