Clayco affiliate picks up Miramar Park of Commerce building for $18M

UPDATED, Sept. 22, 1:35 p.m.: St. Louis, Missouri commercial real estate firm is dipping into the Broward County industrial market.

An affiliate of CRG, the commercial real estate division of national builder Clayco Inc., paid $18 million for a warehouse in the Miramar Park of Commerce, records show.

The buyer took out a $14.5 million loan from BMO Harris Bank to finance the off-market purchase of the property at 10315 USA Today Way in Miramar.

The seller is Zeta Associates LLC, whose president Richard Perlman is also the founder and president of Chicago-based real estate firm Zaragon Inc. Zeta sold the industrial building, a former printing and distribution site for USA Today, for $6 million above its purchase price in 2019.

CRG plans on renovating the 56,087-square-foot building to create a high-end educational campus that could be leased to a national client that operates a medical school, according to a press release.

Zeta was represented by an Avison Young team led by David Duckworth and Tom Viscount. The CRG affiliate paid $321 per square foot, about $107 more a square foot than what Zeta paid two years ago.

The transaction represents the highest price per foot a buyer has paid for an industrial property in Broward, Duckworth and Viscount said.

“Usually the high watermark is $200 to $220 a square foot,” Duckworth said. “It would cost them more to buy the land and build a building. Land prices have gone up significantly in the last three, four years.”

Viscount said Zeta had listed Miramar Park of Commerce for lease and the property was not for sale until CRG inquired about the site about four months ago. “The seller was open and had a price point in mind that they did not want to deviate from,” Viscount said. “Eighteen million dollars was the price point. The buyer came through.”

Broward’s industrial submarket has performed well during the pandemic. According to a second quarter Avison Young report, Broward had a 4.4 percent vacancy rate, the lowest since 2018, and net absorption rose 1.6 percent compared to zero growth during the second quarter last year.

Base rents jumped by 5.4 percent since the start of the pandemic and some landlords are considering rent increases of 4 percent on new tenant leases, according to the report.

Industrial investment activity is also on an upswing. Pricing for industrial properties rose by 2.5 percent in the second quarter, according to Avison Young.

Earlier this month, Cabot Properties bought the Bridge Point Miramar Distribution Center for $71.6 million. The Boston-based logistics real estate investment firm paid about $235 per square foot for the 304,428-square-foot industrial building at 15501 Southwest 29th Street.

An earlier version of this story incorrectly described the property.