Daniels Marketplace sells for $72.5M in south Fort Myers

Daniels Marketplace, a 131,000-square-foot shopping center anchored by Whole Foods Market in south Fort Myers, sold for $72.5 million.

InvenTrust Properties, a publicly traded company headquartered in Houston, acquired the center from AEW Capital Management, a private equity firm founded in Boston in 1981 that now manages more than $86 billion in assets worldwide.

Neither the buyer nor the seller could be reached for comment. In transactions like this, the existing tenant mix and leases typically remain in place, with operations continuing as usual.

Current tenants include a blend of grocery, retail, sit-down and quick-service restaurants, and health and wellness businesses. Retailers include Chico’s, Soma and White House Black Market. Restaurants include Panera Bread, Cava, Mellow Mushroom and Keke’s Breakfast Cafe.

Health and wellness tenants include V/O Med Spa, Hand & Stone Massage and Facial Spa, Club Pilates, Tipsy Nail Bar and Daniels Modern Dentistry. Other tenants include Banfield Pet Hospital, Fidelity Investments, Mathnasium: The Math Learning Center and Tide Cleaners.

Additional tenants are scheduled to open in 2026, including Erik’s, a bicycle retailer, and Keep Boutique.

AEW purchased the shopping center in June 2019 for $49 million, property records show. Since then, the center has expanded from its original 106,729 square feet by an additional 24,616 square feet.

The site has come a long way since 2017, when former LSI Companies CEO Randy Thibaut and his business partners purchased the former golf driving range for $1.5 million through Daniels Brookshire LP.

Located at 6871-6921 Daniels Parkway, at the northwest corner of Six Mile Cypress Parkway, the property was rezoned to allow for retail development.

Thibaut, who was not involved in the most recent transaction, said he knew the land would be valuable but did not anticipate such rapid appreciation.

“It just firms up that the Daniels corridor and that whole sector of south Fort Myers there, it’s become really the epicenter of that whole corridor,” Thibaut said. “And who would have thought it years ago?

“We knew it was a good area. But we didn’t know it would become the epicenter. We knew the property was well positioned. And the highest-and-best use wasn’t a driving range. There was definitely long-term potential there.”

Property records show InvenTrust also assumed $30.25 million in debt tied to the center.

Matt Simmons, a property appraiser with Maxwell, Hendry & Simmons, said the timing of the sale made sense now that the project is fully built and leased.

“Phase 2 just wrapped up in the last year and a half,” Simmons said. “That added roughly 24,000 square feet. That space has now been all leased up. Daniels Marketplace is built out now. It’s a finished development. It’s not unusual for a project to trade, at this stage, now that it’s complete. And the tenants in that second phase are high-quality retail tenants. It’s a great time to sell.”

While real estate transaction volume has slowed in 2025, Simmons said deals that do occur tend to be larger, institutional transactions.

“Obviously the past year or two, in real estate, has not been what the heyday of 2020 to 2022 was,” Simmons said. “But if there’s a really bright spot, particularly over the past 12 to 18 months in commercial real estate, it is our retail markets. Our retail markets are very, very strong right now. To see a buyer like InvenTrust isn’t much of a surprise. But it’s a nice feather in the cap for our Southwest Florida market.”