Miami Beach investor pays $9.9 million for North Port charter school

NORTH PORT — A North Port charter school property has been sold to what the Realtors representing the sellers are calling an international investor but public records tie to a company in Miami Beach.

The Imagine School at North Port building at 1000 Innovation Center sold for $9.9 million in late December. In a February press release, Arizona-based Matthews Real Estate Investment Services, which represented the seller, described the unnamed buyer as “an international investor (who) recently began to dispose of residential assets and was interested in acquiring high-performing assets with the potential for higher yields.”

According to Sarasota County property records, the buyer is a company named Little Sharks Inc. in Miami Beach. The address listed for the company in the public record is 102 24th St., Unit 1112, in Miami Beach, in the luxury complex 1 Hotel & Homes.

Florida’s Division of Corporations, however, lists Little Sharks’ address as 102 24th St, Unit 1216, in Miami Beach. That unit, according to Miami-Dade County property records, is owned by a company called South Beach Property Holdings LLC and is currently listed for rent on Realtor.com for $12,500 per month.

As for unit 1112, according to the county’s property records that one-bedroom, one-bath unit is owned by Anastasiia Vlasiuk, who is listed as the director of Little Sharks, which was incorporated Oct. 28, on the state’s corporation division website. 

A LinkedIn search of that name brought up several entries, none seemed to be based in Miami Beach or Florida.

Matthews Real Estate did not immediately respond to an email asking for the name of the buyer.

So why would a foreign investor from Miami Beach be interested in a charter school building in North Port? According to the press release, the school fit the buyer’s criteria because its yields are higher than most single-tenant buildings in the area.

The school is part of the Imagine Charter chain, a company with about 50 schools across the country, including 16 in Florida. The 36,000-square-foot school has a short-term lease in place.

“Although a short-term lease can intimidate buyers, we were able to source investors who understand the value of having an A school as a tenant and the large capacity the building offered,” says Daniel Gonzalez, an associate at Matthews Real Estate, in the press release.