Easton Group and LBA Logistics are ready to break ground on their Hialeah industrial project after securing a $61 million construction loan.
Principal Life Insurance provided the financing for the joint venture’s two-warehouse development at 4220 West Place, records show. Easton Group and LBA paid $29.4 million for the 26-acre vacant property, currently a truck yard, last February.
Construction will begin this month with a projected completion date in the fourth quarter, Easton Group associate Dalton Easton said.
“Vacancy rates are still very low and rents still seem to be growing,” Easton said. “So we feel we are delivering some much needed space to the market.”
The spec warehouses spanning roughly 463,000 square feet will likely draw significant interest from industrial tenants. In the third quarter, Miami-Dade absorbed more than 600,000 square feet of new warehouse space, and developers had pre-leased 40 percent of industrial buildings under construction, which are fetching rents above $15 a square foot, according to a JLL report.
By the end of 2022, industrial developers would have added more than 2.3 million square feet of warehouse space to the market and will build 7.8 million more square feet by early 2024, JLL found.
Last year, Easton and LBA also partnered to purchase a Doral warehouse for $20 million. LBA Logistics and its sister company LBA Realty are both led by managing principal Phil Belling and based in Irvine, California.
Belling is making huge bets in South Florida’s industrial market. Last week, LBA Realty bought a 37.4-acre business park in Sweetwater for $198 million, the second most expensive industrial deal in South Florida in 2022.
For its part, Doral-based Easton Group has been one of South Florida’s most active industrial developers and investors since the firm was founded in 1974 by CEO Ed Easton. In September, an Easton affiliate paid $14.3 million for a warehouse in unincorporated northwest Miami-Dade County. In April, the firm bought an industrial truck yard in Hollywood, also for $14.3 million.