After 30 years, Linda A. Gary Real Estate moves office from prominent Worth Avenue corner

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After 30 years in an office on the prominent Palm Beach corner of Worth Avenue and South County Road, Linda A. Gary Real Estate is downsizing to a new location a block away.

Broker Linda Gary Belisle this week was busy vacating the ground-floor storefront at 201 Worth Ave., where her real estate brokerage began leasing space in 1995 after its founding in 1993.

But the agency isn’t moving far. Belisle said she is optimistic she will be open for business by Aug. 1 in a smaller office down the block in Suite 318 at 125 Worth Ave. Four sales associates will be making the move with her, she said, including her husband, agent Michael Belisle.

“We just don’t need all the space,” she said, noting that her agents often work from home these days.

Spending three decades in The Worth Avenue Building has created a lot of memories, she added.

“They were great years, and I still have wonderful clients. I’m very comfortable with the move,” said Belisle, a Pennsylvania native whose parents moved their family in 1960 to West Palm Beach.

A new retail tenant already has been signed for the storefront space Belisle occupied at No. 201, said Tom Hamilton, one of the three principals of Lendan LLC, the company that owns the three-story building built in 1958. Hamilton declined to identify the new tenant but said the new store could be open by Nov. 1.

The other principals of Lendan Inc. are Sunny Sessa and Valarie Christopher, business records show. All three have a mailing address in care of Hamilton’s Palm Beach Gardens business, TRH Management Inc., business records show.

For years, Linda Belisle said, her office’s picture windows were a key part of her agency’s marketing strategy. The windows displayed color photographs of for-sale and for-lease properties to attract the eyes of potential clients out for a stroll on the Avenue.

But Belisle said she decided to move, in part, because she has seen a drop-off in walk-in clients. She pointed to the lingering negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on brick-and-mortar businesses in general and the closure of the Avenue’s two nearby department stores. Neiman Marcus shut its doors in 2020 and Saks Fifth Avenue closed in April.

Worth Avenue has changed in other ways, too. The street offers customers hardly any free short-term parking, a longtime perk eliminated by the Town Council in 2024. Metered parking is available streetside, complemented by fee-based parking lots and, in some cases, valet service.

Linda A. Gary Real Estate’s new ocean-block office has 980 square feet compared to the agency’s longtime home, which has 2,100 square feet. The tenant roster at 125 Worth Avenue includes two other real estate agencies — William Raveis South Florida and Premier Estate Properties.

Like the former Neiman Marcus building next door, the building at No. 125 is owned by a limited liability company named after the property’s address and controlled by Miami-based billionaire and financier Ken Griffin, who also owns of the largest estate in Palm Beach.

Once home to a bank, Linda A. Gary Real Estate’s longtime office did not always carry a prized Worth Avenue address, thanks to its corner location.

When she originally went before the Town Council in the early 1995 seeking permission to open in the space, she knew that officials frowned on non-retail businesses occupying ground-level spaces on the Avenue, although there were already two real estate agencies with storefronts there at the time — the old Martha A. Gottfried Inc. and the old William Hutton Associates.

Linda A. Gary Real Estate could open, officials finally ruled, but her front door couldn’t face the Avenue nor could she have a Worth Avenue address. There could also be no sign facing the Avenue.

But in 2012, the Town Council flipped its position and approved a request to change the address to 201 Worth Ave. and to allow Belisle to relocate her front door and add signage on the building’s south wall.

Brown Harris Stevens, which acquired the Hutton agency in 1998, will be the only real estate agency in a storefront on the Avenue’s street level, once Linda A. Gary Real Estate vacates the building. Other agencies occupy upper-story offices on the street.

The Gottfried agency, where Linda Belisle once worked, was acquired in 2012 by Douglas Elliman Real Estate and has its Palm Beach office across town.

Belisle, who married her longtime fiancé last year, has had a home in Palm Beach for many years. When her agency celebrated its 20th anniversary, she told the Palm Beach Daily News the town would always occupy a special place in her heart.

“I love Palm Beach. There’s no other place like it. It’s beautiful, it’s secure and it has a wonderful climate,” she told the newspaper at the time.

Darrell Hofheinz is a USA TODAY Network of Florida journalist who writes about Palm Beach real estate in his weekly “Beyond the Hedges” column. He welcomes tips about real estate news on the island. Email dhofheinz@pbdailynews.com, call 561-820-3831 or tweet @PBDN_Hofheinz. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Linda A. Gary Real Estate moves after 30 years on Palm Beach corner