The Easton Group bought a Medley distribution center used by Frito-Lay, which will temporarily remain a tenant at the building.
Doral-based Easton paid $16.8 million for the property at 12850 Northwest 113th Court, according to a company news release and records. Plano, Texas-based Frito-Lay, a subsidiary of PepsiCo, was the seller.
Easton borrowed $9 million from Grove Bank & Trust for the purchase.
Completed in 1999, the 45,000-square-foot building has 44 dock doors and sits on 6.5 acres, the release says.
Frito-Lay will remain a tenant at the building “for the time being,” but plans to move to a bigger facility “in the near future,” according to the release.
The snack company has leased space elsewhere, taking 131,400 square feet at Bridge Industrial’s Bridge Point Doral development, the South Florida Business Journal has reported. The project is on the southwest corner of Northwest 107th Avenue and Northwest 41st Street.
Easton is a family-owned and led firm that includes investment, brokerage, development and property management divisions. Edward Easton founded the firm in 1974 and is its CEO.
Easton Group has about 900,000 square feet of industrial projects underway in South Florida that are slated for completion next year, according to the release.
The firm also has been steadily beefing up its portfolio through purchases. Last year, Easton paid $14.3 million for the warehouse at 3121 Northwest 125th Street in north Miami-Dade County.
South Florida commercial real estate investment sales dropped this year due to elevated interest rates. Yet, the tri-county region’s industrial market was buoyed by strong demand and rent increases. In the third quarter, Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties’ median asking rents jumped 14 percent, 16 percent and 18 percent, according to JLL. Vacancy rates remained low at 1.6 percent in Miami-Dade, 3.4 percent in Broward and 3.8 percent in Palm Beach.
South Florida still scored big industrial investment sales this year. In the biggest deal, Boston-based Longpoint Partners paid $262 million for a 25-building portfolio spanning 1.4 million square feet. The properties are throughout Miami-Dade and Broward.