Joint venture partners Bridge Development Partners, one of South Florida’s most active industrial real estate developers, and PGIM Real Estate, the global real estate investment and financing business of Prudential Financial, Inc., announced it has secured $67 million in financing to develop Bridge Point Cold Logistics Center, a 312,103-square-foot speculative cold storage facility in Hialeah.
The loan was issued by Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and secured by Steve Roth of CBRE’s Debt & Structured Finance team. It will cover the development of the 20.8-acre site, strategically located at NW 162nd Street and NW 102nd Avenue, acquired by the joint venture partners in July. With financing in place, the joint venture will break ground this month. On schedule to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2021, the project represents the first-ever cold storage project to be delivered on a speculative basis in South Florida.
“As consumers increasingly turn to online grocery shopping, the demand for cold storage space is reaching unprecedented levels—especially in major population centers such as South Florida,” said Kevin Carroll, a principal of Bridge Development Partners and Florida market leader. “As such, we are pleased to have secured financing for our first spec cold storage project in South Florida. We look forward to breaking ground later this month and delivering a best-in-class cold storage facility that will serve to meet this growing market demand.”
This acquisition marks the first cold storage project in South Florida for the joint venture, which launched a $150 million national cold-storage investment program late last year, targeting $400 million in assets. This programmatic joint venture seeks value-add returns through the development of Class-A cold-storage facilities, as well as the acquisition and repositioning of Class-A/B cold-storage facilities nationwide.
Bridge Point Cold Logistics Center is designed with flexibility in mind and can accommodate multiple tenants. The building features a front-load design with 50′ clear heights that maximize pallet storage efficiency; 348′ building depth, 39 dock-high doors, three grade-level truck ramps, an estimated 3% office finish, 207 car parking spaces, and 49 trailer parking stalls. The facility’s state-of-the-art refrigeration systems provide broad temperature flexibility in all units, ranging from -10°F to +55°F, allowing the building to accommodate both freezer and cooler users. The property’s prime location just south of the Miami-Dade and Broward County line, offers easy access to Florida’s major transportation arteries including the Florida Turnpike, I-75 and State Road 826.
Recently named ‘Developer of the Year’ by NAIOP South Florida, BRIDGE has acquired 473 acres in 15 separate transactions throughout Miami Dade and Broward Counties and delivered approximately 7 million square feet of Class-A industrial space across the region since entering the market in 2012. The company’s current South Florida portfolio spans more than 3 million square feet.