Winter Park Starbucks
Winter Park, Florida
Delivered: May 2004 | Total Cost: $682k
• Plan: acquire vacant and decrepit Exxon gasoline service station, considered to be at the gateway to Winter Park by the local townsfolk, and groundlease to adjacent Walgreen’s to improve Walgreen’s parking, visibility, and image.
• Potential Deal Breakers: former gasoline service station contained inherent contamination stigma; very small site (10,000 square feet of land) presented potential deal-breaking drainage issue; Walgreen’s reluctant to commit to appropriate rent.
Result: contamination not as bad s assumed and, indemnity obtained from Exxon; disregarded Walgreen’s to secure a 1,500 square foot stand alone build-to-suit lease from Starbucks; convinced municipality to permit adaptive reuse of former underground drainage system.
Tampa Starbucks
Tampa, Florida
Delivered: March 2005 | Total Cost: $839k
• Plan: acquire vacant and decrepit Mobil gasoline service station and perform a 1,800 square foot build-to-suit for Starbucks.
• Potential Deal Breakers: former gasoline service station contained inherent contamination stigma; site located in what appeared to be a very low income area; site located in historical district subjecting the site to the purview of the city historical commission.
Result: contamination not as bad as assumed and indemnity obtained from Mobil; performed additional demographic analysis to show Starbucks that the neighborhoods were undergoing gentrification and, therefore, the future customers were of higher incomes and more likely to become a Starbucks customer; obtained resident support for new store to block the historical commission’s attempts to bastardize the site layout and massively upgrade the architectural treatments.
Notable: we obtained a variance allowing the 75 interstate sign to be refaced and, to date, it is the largest Starbucks sign east of the Mississippi River.