MG3 Group is upping the stakes on its industrial real estate wager.
The firm’s real estate investment trust, or MG3 REIT, dropped $78 million for the Walgreens Distribution Center, an industrial facility that spans 98 acres in west Palm Beach County, according to the buyer’s news release. The property at 15998 Walgreens Drive is west of Jupiter, near Bee Line Highway and Pratt Whitney Road.
In the sale-leaseback, Walgreens sold the real estate but will continue to fully occupy the 683,000-square-foot property. The company services 460 of its stores from Central Florida to the Keys from this facility.
Jose Lobón and Maury Vanden Eykel of CBRE represented Walgreens.
Marcelo Saiegh, Gustavo Bogomolni and Hernan Leonoff’s MG3 Group develops and invests in Florida real estate. Based in Aventura, MG3 has a strong focus on charter schools.
Last year, MG3 sold eight campuses throughout Florida for a combined $242 million, including one in Homestead and another in Hollywood.
The firm also converted the former Miami Herald printing facility in Doral into BridgePrep Academy, a charter school with a 1,650-student capacity. MG3 paid $11.6 million for the 6-acre facility in 2020.
It also has focused on offices and retail. MG3 bought the Doral Concourse office building at 8400 Northwest 36th Street for $96 million last year. In February, it purchased the Walmart-anchored Fontainebleau Park Plaza at 9191 West Flagler Street in unincorporated Miami-Dade County for $70 million.
The firm’s bet on the industrial market comes as it continues to experience an upward swing, a trajectory that is expected to hold through the rest of the year.
Palm Beach County’s average asking rents hit $11.84 per square foot in the third quarter, up from $9.34 a square foot in the same period of last year, according to JLL. Plus, available space is hard to come by, with vacancies dropping to 3.1 percent in the third quarter from 3.6 percent during the same period of last year.