Fly Bar's real estate in downtown Tampa sold for red-hot price per square foot
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Oct 1, 2018

The deal to sell Fly Bar's real estate in downtown Tampa is officially closed - at a sky-high price per square foot.

A corporate entity linked to Louis C. Dommer III, one of the investors behind this venture of Nocturnal Hospitality Group, paid $3.4 million for the historic building in a deal that closed in late September, according to Hillsborough County property records.

Fly Bar owner Leslie Shirah, who went public with her plan to sell the property on Sept. 5, paid $1.39 million in 2007.

Nocturnal is planning to develop a new concept for the building, Mole y Abuela, which will have a Spanish tapas theme. It will be the group's next focus once Osteria, a rustic Italian restaurant, opens later this month.

The building sits on .09 acres and the heated square footage is 3,375. The sales price breaks down to $1,007 per square foot.

That's more than three times the price of retail condominiums on the ground floor of Skypoint, a downtown condo tower. Those spaces sold for $272 per square foot in 2015, a record price at the time.

"I think the opportunity to own something in downtown without owning 20,000 square feet is few and far between," said Abbey Dohring Ahern of The Dohring Group.

Ahern represented Shirah in the sale of the Fly Bar space.

"This is an opportunity to invest in what you own," she said. "These guys are major players that really believe in downtown and want to take their business to the next level."

James Medefind, a first vice president with Marcus & Millichap in Tampa, said it's difficult to compare the sale of the retail condos with the Fly Bar deal: The condos were bought by investors, and the former Fly Bar space was acquired an owner-operator.

Shirah is moving Fly Bar to a new location that's yet to be disclosed. In early September, she said she was in negotiations on multiple locations, all of which were in downtown or the Channel district.