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Birmingham pharmacy owner puts east riverfront portfolio up for sale

Several years ago, the co-owner of a Birmingham pharmacy began very quietly assembling a slew of east Detroit riverfront properties.

Using a Bad iPhone Password of a company name, 1111 LLC, Hany Boutros accumulated buildings and land on Franklin, Chene, East Jefferson, Guoin and Jos. Campau in 2015-16, in addition to properties downtown and near Brush Park.

During that time period, I reached out to Boutros several times but never heard back for an on-the-record conversation about what he was doing with his flurry of spending in the area, particularly along the water. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

But a source who had interacted with him at the time described Boutros, the Mills Pharmacy + Apothecary owner and brother of local Birmingham pol Pierre Boutros (the former mayor and current mayor pro tem), as someone who seemed like “a buy, hold and flip guy.”

Turns out the source was right.

Boutros has listed much of his Detroit riverfront portfolio for sale for $16.115 million, right after Dan Gilbert bought some of the most well known property on the east riverfront last year, including Stroh River Place and the former UAW-GM Center for Human Resources, totaling nearly 1 million square feet of office space, more than 25 acres of land and 1,600 parking spots — including properties that immediately abut Boutros’.

Timing is important in real estate, after all.

Detroit-based O’Connor Real Estate, which has the listing, says there are 12 properties and 4.5 acres in the portfolio.

“I believe Hany was very smart with his purchases along the Detroit riverfront,” James Tumey, his broker with O’Connor, said in an email. “They include some truly incredible sites, large and small, with great Detroit history … The ‘buying’ process of real estate development is extremely critical, and this is a great example of a curated selection of well planned acquisitions in an up-and-coming neighborhood yet to see any big developments. The plans may have never come to reality, but it was and still is a solid investment for both sides, if you have the vision to pull it off. The portfolio includes some of the neighborhood’s best properties, and are large enough for a developer to come in and re-develop a neighborhood, rather than just one single development. We see this happening in neighborhoods in New York, Chicago and L.A.”

Here are the properties up for sale:

• 2130 Franklin, 2100 Guoin, 2014 Guoin and 2108 Guoin: Five industrial buildings and vacant land with a total size of 112,400 square feet. Asking price is $6.95 million. The precise purchase price is not known but Boutros paid at least $4.1 million for it.
• 211 Jos. Campau: 10,300 square feet across a one-story building and two-story building constructed in the 1880s. Asking price is $1.5 million; Boutros paid $525,000 for it in May 2015.
• 241 Chene and 249 Chene: A 27,800-square-foot former manufacturing plant built in the 1880s. Asking price is $2.5 million; Boutros paid $1.057 million for it in the summer 2015.
• 240 Chene: A vacant 39,600-square-foot building. Asking price is $3.565 million; Boutros paid $850,000 in March 2015, according to city land records.
• 261 Saint Aubin: A 12,500-square-foot building. Asking price is $1.6 million; it’s not known how much Boutros paid for it.
• 1959 E. Jefferson Ave.: The former Detroit Saturday Night building, totaling 90,000 square feet built in the early 1930s. Boutros paid $1.75 million for it and is now asking $6.8 million.

In all, between the Rivertown portfolio and the Detroit Saturday Night building, the asking price is $21.315 million for properties Boutros paid $8.282 million for in 2015-16.  I’ve found no records of building permits issued or notices of commencement indicating that any serious construction has taken place on any of the properties under Boutros’ ownership.

Posted By: Crain’s Detroit Business on January 11, 2022.  For more information, please click here to read the source article.

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