UPDATED, Oct. 1, 2:42 p.m.: The former Doral office building of the Miami Herald and its sister Spanish language newspaper, el Nuevo Herald, traded for $27.3 million.
A venture led by institutional real estate investor Parmenter, also based in Doral, bought the property at 3511 Northwest 91st Avenue from Memphis-based SMPO, according to public records. Parmenter took out a $26.5 million loan from Ladder Capital Finance.
The buyers, which include Prime Finance and Cudlob Capital, plan to renovate and lease the building to multiple tenants, according to a news release.
Tere Blanca and Cary Cohen of Blanca Commercial Real Estate represented the seller. The brokerage’s Blanca and Danet Linares will lead the team leasing the property.
Melissa Rose and Maxx Carney were part of the JLL team that represented the buyer in securing the acquisition financing.
The two-story building totals 160,000 square feet on 9 acres, according to property records.
It was originally built as the headquarters for the U.S. Southern Command in 1997. SMPO had bought the lot in 1996 for $2.8 million, records show.
Parmenter, led by Darryl Parmenter and John Davidson, invests on behalf of life companies, global fund sponsors, family offices and others, and it also is a developer and manager according to its website. Since it was founded in 1989, it has purchased and managed a portfolio of more than $2 billion in real estate across the U.S.
The Miami Herald and el Nuevo Herald canceled their lease for the property last year, as their parent company, Sacramento-based McClatchy, underwent bankruptcy reorganization. In August 2020, a federal bankruptcy judge approved the sale of McClatchy, family owned and run since 1857, to New Jersey-based hedge fund Chatham Asset Management. The deal was valued at $312 million, according to published reports.
The Herald and el Nuevo Herald, whose staff had been working from home since March 2020 because of the pandemic, officially vacated the Doral property last August, according to an announcement last summer from the former publisher and president.
The media companies’ nearby printing facility also sold last year. Aventura-based MG3 bought the three-story warehouse at 3500 Northwest 89th Court for $11.6 million in October from a company not affiliated with the Herald.
Parmenter’s investment comes at a questionable time for office real estate, as it is unclear how the market will evolve in light of the transition to working from home.
In Miami-Dade County, the office vacancy rate reached nearly 17 percent in the second quarter, an eight-year high, according to Avison Young. Still, experts have cautioned not to panic, saying this largely was due to the onslaught of new supply, and that the region as a whole soon would benefit from the influx of financial and tech firms.