A private equity firm whose founder ran into trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission over a decade ago bought an Office Depot-anchored mixed-use site in Hialeah for $23.1 million.
An affiliate of Miami-based Volta Global, led by Marko Dimitrijevic and Jeff Evans, acquired a strip mall and a two-story big box store with a self-storage component at 5301 West 20th Avenue, records and real estate database Vizzda show. The two-story building is leased to Office Depot and A+ MIni Storage. The price amounts to $4.1 million per acre.
The South Florida self-storage market is experiencing a slowdown in rent growth and an oversupply of storage units, according to Yardi Matrix. Meanwhile, strip malls and outdoor shopping centers are the most sought-after retail real estate assets in South Florida.
The seller, an entity managed by A+ Mini principal Raul Nuñez, paid $3.9 million for the 5.6-acre site in 2001, records show. The buildings were completed in 1978 and 2008.
Volta Global has developed or acquired 4.2 million square feet of self-storage, multifamily, and hospitality properties in the U.S. and Europe since its founding in 2014, according to the firm’s website. It owns 1 million square feet of self-storage space in the southeastern U.S.
Dimitrijevic did not respond to a request for comment.
His Swiss-based global investment fund Everest Capital collapsed the same year he established Volta Global, after betting heavily that the Swiss Franc would fall in value against the Euro between 2014 and 2015, published reports state. However, in 2015, the Swiss National Bank announced it was lifting its caps on Euro exchanges, and the Swiss Franc shot up by more than 30 percent.
Everest closed within days, and investors lost a majority of their investments, according to a 2020 settlement with the SEC. Regulators determined that Everest was over-exposed in the euro investment, yet Everest assured investors that their funds were safe, the settlement states.
Without admitting or denying the findings, Everest and Dimitrijevic agreed to be censured, to cease-and-desist from making misleading statements, pay a penalty of $750,000, forfeit $2 million in profits and pay $458,000 in interest, according to the SEC.
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