A North Sioux City, South Dakota-based cold storage real estate firm breezed into South Florida’s industrial market with a $66 million deal in Miami-Dade County.
Vertical Cold Storage, led by President and CEO Curt Mastbergen, bought a 274,191-square-foot freezer facility at 11801 Northwest 102 Road in Medley, according to records. The deal worked out to $240 a square foot. Vertical Cold Storage took out a $41 million loan with UMB Bank NA to finance the purchase, records show.
The seller, Camden, New Jersey-based United States Cold Storage, bought the 10-acre site for $3.7 million in 2003 and completed 189,195 square feet of freezer warehouse space a year later. The firm added another 85,188 square feet in 2019, records show.
Vertical Cold Storage, an affiliate of Kansa City, Missouri-based real estate investment manager Platform Ventures, owns and operates four other freezer facilities in Chicago, Dallas, Charlotte and Omaha, according to its website.
In Miami-Dade, industrial landlords are still reaping dividends from pandemic fueled tenant expansions and relocations, according to a JLL first quarter report. In the most recent quarter, tenants absorbed 1.3 million square feet of industrial space, compared to 371,349 square feet during the same period of last year, according to JLL.
Miami-Dade’s industrial vacancy rate narrowed to 2.6 percent in the first quarter, compared to 6 percent during the same period last year, the report states. And average asking rents widened by 52.8 percent to $11.61 a square foot, compared to $7.60 a square foot in the same period of 2021.
In Medley, the vacancy rate hit 2.4 percent in the most recent quarter, compared to 4.9 percent in last year’s first quarter, while asking rents averaged $12.21 a square foot, compared to $7.39 a square foot during the same period of last year, according to JLL.
National industrial players are bullish in Medley. Seagis recently paid $23.7 million for two industrial facilities, and $14.8 million for a trailer parking lot in Medley.
In December, Prologis bought a Medley warehouse for $23 million.