Blackstone and Link Logistics sold another South Florida industrial property — to surpass the $1 billion mark in six separate deals since November.
The sales are likely the result of the two firms seeking to cash out investors who backed funds used for the acquisition and renovation of existing warehouses or the development of new industrial projects, according to experts.
“[Blackstone and Link] have funds with different investment profiles…some with the strategy of ‘Let’s buy, let’s develop, let’s lease and let’s sell within five to seven years,’” Sebastian Juncadella with Miami-based Fairchild Partners told The Real Deal. “With how big their portfolio is, it makes sense that they are going to sell some assets. The timing [of the six deals] is probably coincidental to a degree.”
In the most recent deal, an affiliate of Boston-based TA Realty, led by James Buckingham, paid $105.7 million for a 43.7-acre development site in Opa-locka, records and real estate database Vizzda show. Known as phase two of Ironwood Commerce Center, the development at 12691 Northwest LeJeune Road would consist of six office and industrial buildings spanning 741,837 square feet. The property used to be the Opa-Locka Hialeah Flea Market, records show.
Blackstone, led by Stephen Schwarzman, acquired the site in 2018 when the New York investment giant bought Gramercy Property Trust, which became Link. The subsidiary is led by Luke Petherbridge.
Gramercy bought the Opa-locka property for $38 million in 2017, records show.
Over the past eight months, Blackstone and Link have closed five other separate deals for industrial sites across the tri-county region for a combined $910.2 million. Still, the sold properties represent a small fraction of Blackstone and Link’s South Florida warehouse portfolio. Across Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, Link owns 191 industrial sites spanning 18.7 million square feet, according to the firm’s website.
With the rise of industrial property values in recent years, the market is ripe for “opportunistic selling” of stabilized warehouse properties, explained Chris Skibinski with Avision Young. “Blackstone and Link have had great appreciation,” Skibinski said. “They’ve already executed their business plan. And there’s still a ton of capital that wants to be in industrial [real estate]. It’s time to harvest it.”
TA Realty was also the buyer in another of the six deals when it bought the completed first phase of Ironwood Commerce Center at 12700 Northwest 42nd Avenue. In December, Blackstone and Link sold that Opa-locka industrial complex for $160 million to TA Realty. The same month, Miami-based Elion Partners bought a three-property industrial portfolio in Sunrise for $206.5 million from Blackstone and Link.
However, the undeveloped 43.7 acres that TA Realty just acquired were not on the market, Fairchild’s Juncadella said. More than likely, the buyer acquired the second Ironwood site to avoid having to compete with Blackstone and Link for tenants in the future, he added.
“You don’t want to be buying an asset where there’s going to be competitive development across the street,” Juncadella said. “So I would imagine that part of the discussion involved [asking Blackstone and Link] ‘Would you guys consider selling the adjacent land for the right number?’”
In November, Blackstone and Link sold a 26-property industrial portfolio spanning the tri-county region to Boston-based Longpoint Partners for $331.3 million. The three sales in November and December were the largest industrial deals in South Florida for 2024.
More recently, in May Blackstone and Link sold Airport Trade Center, a three-building industrial complex near Doral, to Darien, Connecticut-based East Capital Partners for $90.2 million. The prior month, the joint venture sold three industrial properties in Dania Beach and Miramar to Los Angeles-based Ares Management for a combined $120.5 million.
