Foundry and HighBrook buy Doral warehouse for $18M

Foundry Commercial teamed up with real estate private equity firm HighBrook Investors to buy an industrial park in Doral. The partnership paid $18 million for the Americas International Center at 9300-9380 Northwest 13th Street.

The property has a 147,000-square-foot industrial facility that is 95 percent leased, according to a Foundry press release. It is within the Airport West submarket, one of the most active in the county.

Orlando-based Foundry and New York-based Highbrook paid roughly $122 a square foot for the site.

The seller, Americas International Center Ltd., paid $2 million for the property in 1995, records show. The entity is tied to Ernesto Fabre, who owns a design consulting company called Fabre Design Group in Coral Gables.

Ted Elam, Foundry’s vice president of development and investments, said in a statement that the partnership was attracted to the industrial park’s location in the Airport West submarket due to easy access to other areas of Miami-Dade, including PortMiami and Miami International Airport.

“There are a number of options to consider for the future of this property” Elam said. “HighBrook and Foundry can create value by improving the existing asset, and there is also the potential for redevelopment in an extremely desirable industrial corridor.”

In the past three years, Foundry has developed more than 6.4 million square feet in South Florida, as part of a national portfolio totaling more than 55 million square feet. In June of last year, the company scored a $26.3 million construction loan to build two industrial warehouses in Hialeah Gardens.

Founded in 2010, HighBrook has commercial real estate investments across North America and Europe, specializing in recapitalizing properties, according to the company’s website.

Investor interest in South Florida remains high, but inventory for sale is low, according to a recent Colliers International industrial report. As a result, industrial landlords are in a position to reap monumental rent growth in the next five years, Colliers said.

The Airport West submarket fared well in the second quarter compared to the overall Miami-Dade industrial sector, according to Colliers. The vacancy rate in Airport West was 4.1 percent compared to 3.9 percent for the entire county, and asking rents were 35 cents lower than the $10.72 a square foot overall for Miami-Dade.