Equitable Real Estate Partners just scooped up a three-building industrial campus east of Hialeah for $17.5 million. The deal marks a quick turnaround for Terranova Corp., the seller, which had bought out its partner on the property Blackrock Realty Advisors late last year.
The purchase covers Terranova’s Airport East Distribution Center, a 397,585-square-foot warehouse campus at 7000 Northwest 32nd Avenue. Equitable’s purchase breaks down to $44 per square foot.
Cushman & Wakefield, which was marketing the property on behalf of Terranova, announced the deal Friday. The brokerage’s agents Mike Davis, Rick Brugge Michael Lerner, Wayne Ramoski and Gian Rodriguez worked on the sale.
Davis wrote in the news release that Terranova’s campus was an attractive pickup because it’s almost entirely leased, and it’s less than five miles from the Miami International Airport — a major distribution hub.
Roughly 90 percent of the building was occupied at the time of its sale. Data from the CoStar Group shows the largest tenant, freight firm Econocaribe Consolidators at 136,000 square feet, also has a lease agreement until 2021. Asking rents average $6.1 per square foot.
Terranova and Blackrock bought the campus as a joint venture for $15 million, or just below $38 per square foot, in 2006. They spent $2.5 million to give the aging 1950s-era warehouses a facelift, and converted it from a single-tenant grocery business into a multi-tenant distribution center.
In November 2015, Terranova bought out Blackrock’s interest in the 18-acre park for $12.75 million. This latest sale fetched a significantly lower price per square foot than Packaging Corp. of America’s $12 million purchase of two Miami warehouses in September, which traded for $83 per foot.
Miami-Dade’s industrial market has seen steady improvements in both rents and vacancies over the past year, in no small part thanks to speculators awaiting a windfall of business at PortMiami following the newly widened Panama Canal.
Developers have taken notice: Flagler Global Logistics just broke ground on the first phase of a massive 8 million-square-foot industrial park, and Chicago-based Bridge Development Partners has launched more than 1.8 million square feet of projects in South Florida over the past three years.