Similar pricing hasn’t been achieved since January 2005, the height of the commercial real estate boom, when a $19.5 million drugstore traded in Miami. According to industry research, the only comparable transaction since then closed in August 2011 when a drugstore in Fort Myers, FL, commanded $1,466 per square foot.

“Investors will continue to pay premiums for exceptionally located net-leased properties given the scarcity of quality assets on the market,” says Germain. “We received multiple qualified offers from all types of investors around the world for this property.”

Built in 2001 on 1.61 acres at 3025 South Las Vegas Blvd., the drugstore is open 24 hours per day. The property is located two blocks from the Las Vegas Convention Center, less than one-quarter mile north of the Encore at Wynn Las Vegas hotel and less than one-quarter mile south of Circus Circus Hotel and Casino. Walgreens was in the 11^th year of a 20-year triple-net lease at this location, and prior to the close of escrow Germain negotiated an extension of the lease on behalf of the landlord with the tenant. “Walgreens signed an early lease extension providing 10 additional years to its term, showing the company’s long-term commitment to the location and increasing the overall desirability of the asset to the new ownership,” says Germain.

The lease structure is rare for Walgreens in that it provides for 10% rent increases every 10 years in addition to a percentage rent clause. Walgreens has opened three other stores on Las Vegas Blvd., with the latest opening on the south end of the Strip in February.

Germain tells GlobeSt.com that the buyer obtained financing for the purchase, but the details were not provided. He adds that the buyer intends to hold the property on a long-term basis, and that the seller is a local real estate partnership looking to place its equity in alternative investments. No further details about the buyer were available before deadline, but Ziv tells GlobeSt.com, “The buyer owns similar drugstore assets across the country.”

As GlobeSt.com previously reported, earlier this month Liberty Property Limited Partnership sold a 49,000-square-foot office building at the corner of Military Trail and Clint Moore Road in Boca Raton to Win-Preferred LLC for $4.2 million. Andy Strasser, a broker at AGS Realty who was the only broker in the transaction, told GlobeSt.com the buyer plans to build a Walgreens store and two major banks on the site. Also earlier this month, M&M arranged the sale of a 14,820-square-foot Walgreens drugstore in Sunnyvale, CA, to a Silicon Valley apartment owner for $10.05 million as part of a 1031 exchange. The sales price equates to $678 per square foot. And Walgreens Co. plans to double its 20,000 square feet of office space in Chicago’s one-million-square-foot Sullivan Center tower.