Envision Cold made its first Florida commercial real estate play, paying $47.2 million for a freezer facility complex in West Little River.
An affiliate of Atlanta-based Envision Cold, led by Eric Diaz, Stephen Draper, and Austin Solem, acquired three cold storage warehouses spanning 187,122 square feet at 2950 Northwest 75th Street in unincorporated Miami-Dade County, records and real estate database Vizzda show.
The buyer paid $253 a square foot for the warehouses. Envision Cold partially financed the purchase with a $33.9 million loan from Barings, a global investment management firm owned by Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company.
Seller Rivas Family Enterprises, led by Manuel Rivas in North Miami, sold the 6.8-acre property for more than 10 times its purchase price more than two decades ago. In 2003, Rivas paid $4.4 million for it, records show. The industrial buildings were completed in 1967.
Formed in 2023 with $1.5 billion in capital, Envision Cold has developed nine cold storage facilities in California, Texas, Washington and British Columbia, Canada, according to the firm’s website.
Cold storage facilities are a small but key niche of South Florida’s industrial market. In February, IP Capital Partners purchased its first freezer warehouse for $25.7 million. The Boca Raton-based firm acquired a 77,607-square-foot building near Miami International Airport.
In November, New York-based BentallGreenOak bought a cold storage facility in Medley for $60 million. The 176,699-square-foot warehouse is fully leased to food distribution company Quirch Foods through 2042, with two renewal options for 10 years each.
Overall, the South Florida industrial market could enter short-term volatility in the coming months due to economic uncertainty resulting from the Trump administration’s trade war, according to a recent CBRE report. In the first quarter, tenant demand softened, and asking rents remained high across the tri-county region, CBRE found. In Miami-Dade, the amount of new industrial space under construction dropped to 5.1 million square feet in the first quarter, compared to 7.5 million square feet during the same period of last year. The vacancy rate climbed to 5.7 percent, compared to 3.6 percent, year-over-year, the report shows.
