Butters buys Pompano land from Prologis for spec industrial project

Butters Construction & Development, along with its partner Blackrock, just paid $15.4 million to buy a swath of vacant land in Pompano Beach from Prologis as part of its plan to build a new speculative industrial project.

According to county records, Butters bought about 26 acres at the southwestern corner of Northwest 18th Street and Northwest 15th Avenue.

Adam Vaisman, director of acquisitions at Butters, told The Real Deal that the company is planning to build a $40 million, two-phase industrial project aimed at distributors.

The first will house three warehouses totaling 320,000 square feet, while the second will encompass a 60,000-square-foot building. He said the project is targeted toward tenants who need between 5,000 and 100,000 square feet of space, and that rents will compare similarly to other new buildings in the city.

“We just thought it was a great opportunity,” he said. “It’s hard to find 26 acres that close to I-95 in Pompano.”

Butters has already begun site work on the land and expects to complete the first phase by summer 2017.

The land was formerly owned by Pompano’s community redevelopment agency, which sold it and another two nearly parcels to industrial developer AMB for $10 million in 2006 as part of an effort to reduce crime in the neighborhood, according to a memorandum from the CRA.

AMB, along with co-developer Butters, built out 225,000 square feet of industrial space dubbed the Pompano Center of Commerce before AMB was bought out by Prologis in 2011.

The site was inactive in the following years, according to the CRA memorandum, and Butters decided to buy the land along with equity partner BlackRock, an asset manager and financial institution that’s an active trader of South Florida real estate. For its venture with Butters, BlackRock would be investing equity from the ATT Pension Fund.

County records show Butters financed the acquisition with a $21.95 million loan from Branch Banking & Trust Co.