Jackie Soffer

The best place nationwide to shop is right at home in Aventura, according to Jackie Soffer. 

The 3 million-square-foot Aventura Mall has humble origins. Soffer’s father, Don Soffer, developed the shopping center — then about a third of its current size — in 1983. Around the time his daughter got involved in the family business, Don was ready to hand the reins to his kids and play more golf. In the decades since, Jackie Soffer said, things have changed. “This mall has transitioned from a Macy’s-Sears-Penny’s property to a property that has Hermès and Givenchy and Cartier and Louis Vuitton — and we just signed Prada.”

Turnberry recently anchored the mall with an Apple Store designed by Norman Foster’s Norman + Partners and a whimsical 93-foot metal slide designed by German artist Carsten Höller.

Turnberry has about $10 billion in commercial and residential assets, including some 20 million square feet of retail, more than 7,000 residential units, 1.5 million square feet of office and more than 3,000 hotel rooms. Since Soffer became head of the company in 2019, she has committed a lot of time to curating its existing properties. But she’s also got some new irons in the fire.

Thus far in 2024, Turnberry has signed a deal with the Marriott Group to develop and operate a St. Regis hotel and residences adjacent to the J.W. Marriott in Nashville. Turnberry also broke ground on its 299-unit condo development called One Park Tower at SoLé Mia, a master-planned community and joint venture with New York’s LeFrak family. In December, Turnberry and Houston-based Belmont Village secured a $64 million construction loan to build a 153-unit assisted living facility in Aventura. Baptist Health South Florida and Harrison Street are partners on the project.

The rising cost of insurance in Florida has caught Soffer’s attention in recent years, too, especially when it comes to financing new construction. “If you have a loan on a property, you need to have property insurance, and property insurance has gone up over the past five years tremendously,” Soffer said.

But Turnberry has survived the supposed retail apocalypse quite handily, and Soffer’s outlook remains rosy.“

I think all of us got spoiled with what the interest rates were,” Soffer said. “It’s harder to build now because construction pricing went up. Financing costs went up. Land prices went up. It’s not as easy to enter this market and develop. But everything is cyclical, so we’ll see.”