Bal Harbour real estate firm teamed up with Barings to acquire Coral Springs Logistics Center.

Arkadia Property Group and Barings teamed up to buy a Coral Springs industrial complex for $31 million in an off-market deal. The joint venture acquired the Coral Springs Logistics Center at 3850-3872 Northwest 126th Avenue, according to records. Arkadia is a Bal Harbour-based commercial real estate firm cofounded by managing partners David Aaron and Richard Kilstock. Headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, Barings is a global investment arm of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company. With more than $371 billion in assets worldwide, Barings is led by Chairman and CEO Mike Freno.

The joint venture paid $241 a square foot for the two-building complex. The seller, an entity managed by Deborah Ansin and Luis and Hansel Graef, bought the property for $4.5 million in 2019 and

completed the 128,563 square feet of warehouse space a year later, records show. “In the middle of the first quarter, we reached out to the seller,” Arkadia’s Aaron said. “Pretty quickly we came to

terms and executed a fast-paced transaction.” Arkadia and Barings showed interest in Coral Springs Logistics Center because it is a new complex that is close to the Sawgrass Expressway, Aaron said.

 

“We liked the scale,” he said. “We liked the quality and the location. We believe being adjacent to the expressway is really important for logistics and warehousing.” South Florida’s industrial market continues to display strong fundamentals, such as tenant demand and rising rents, Aaron said. “Prices per square foot at which new leases are transacting justify the increases in the purchase prices

by square foot,” he said. “We are in the process of marketing 30,000 square feet of available space, and we believe that we will be very pleased where rents will land.” In the first quarter, South Florida’s industrial market had a 2.9 vacancy rate, compared to 4.4 percent during the same period last year, according to a recent report by Lee & Associates. The average asking rent climbed 14 percent to

$11.96 from $10.46 a square foot in the first quarter of 2021, the report states. The Arkadia-Barings Coral Springs acquisition surpassed South Florida’s highest industrial sale of the first quarter on

a price per-square-foot basis: The $52 million sale of a 237,756-square foot industrial property in Homestead. The buyer, Industrial Logistics Properties Trust, paid $219 per square foot, the

Lee & Associates report states. Other recent industrial deals in South Florida include Avid Asset Management and Fogel Capital paying $22 million for a logistics warehouse in West Palm Beach,

and the $10.7 million sale of an industrial complex in Margate.