Lincoln Road Is Opening a Second Shopping Street Behind Its Storefronts. Small-Bay Retail Is the Bet

Comras Company has started work on NoLi, a roughly 150,000-square-foot retail district on the 700 and 800 blocks of Lincoln Road in Miami Beach, and the city has approved turning North Lincoln Lane, a service alley of loading docks and dumpsters, into a pedestrian shopping street with new storefronts and outdoor dining. Crews are opening an 18-foot-wide passage through 723 Lincoln Road to connect the two, ending at a new courtyard with café seating and a fountain.

What Comras bought and what it is building

Comras bought the 11-storefront assemblage in November 2025 from affiliates of Morgan Stanley and Terranova for about $140 million, roughly $933 per square foot, according to Traded, with a $117 million loan from ACORE Capital that also covers a $30 million construction budget. The Historic Preservation Board approved work on the 1941 building at 719-737 Lincoln Road in June, and the Design Review Board approved the facade overhaul and the pedestrian-only lane. Trash rooms and electrical transformers move inside the buildings so the back of the block can function as a second front.

NoLi adds no square footage. Instead, it converts existing buildings into more than 40 continuous storefronts in small bays of roughly 400 to 4,000 square feet, rather than large boxes. Current tenants include The Cheesecake Factory, Salt & Straw, IT’SUGAR and Lincoln Eatery.

Why small bays, and why now

Lincoln Road’s business improvement district puts occupancy at about 80%, and asking rents now run about $120 to $200 per square foot, down from a peak near $300 a decade ago, according to Traded. That reset opens the street to boutique retailers and independent restaurants that could not afford it before, and those operators want small spaces. Investors are returning as well: Torose Equities paid $11.7 million for 716-720 Lincoln Road in February, and a lot at 500 Lincoln Road sold for $8.4 million in April.

Food is anchoring neighborhood retail

A few miles west, in Midtown Miami, Wilder is preparing to open a neighborhood grocery market of nearly 8,000 square feet at 3250 NE First Avenue, with about 4,000 products, a café, a patio and a pickup window. Major Food Group, the company behind Carbone, is a founding investor, its first investment in a grocery business. The prepared food program comes from the team behind Los Félix. Small, food-driven anchors like this one are doing the job that department stores used to do: giving people a reason to visit often.

What this means for you

If you run a restaurant or boutique, the combination of reset rents and new small-bay space on Lincoln Road creates an entry point that did not exist a few years ago. Ask about second-generation kitchen space, outdoor seating rights and buildout allowances. If you own retail, dividing large spaces into smaller bays and improving the back of the building can widen your tenant pool. If you are investing, prices on the street now reflect lower rents, which is where the opportunity lies.

AXCESS Commercial helps retailers and restaurant operators find the right space, and helps owners with leasing, listing retail property for sale and day-to-day property management.

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