Ares Management paid $111.1 million for a Countyline Corporate Park development site in Hialeah, with plans for a three-building industrial complex.
Some of the space may already be earmarked for prospective tenants, filings show.
Ares, through its Ares Industrial Real Estate Income Trust, bought 52 acres of land on the northwest corner of Northwest 154th Street and West 40th Avenue from Florida East Coast Industries, according to records and real estate database Vizzda. The property is at 4010 West 104th Street.
Miami-based FECI has been developing Countyline Corporate Park, but also selling chunks of buildable land.
Ares plans to develop Buildings 19 and 20, each spanning 214,000 square feet; and Building 21, planned for nearly 193,000 square feet, according to notices of commencement filed to Miami-Dade County this week.
It also plans to build smaller office and warehouse spaces, ranging from roughly 21,000 square feet to 57,000 square feet. Records filed by Ares list names of logistics, manufacturing, wholesale and other companies that appear to be potential tenants. The firms include Mitsubishi Logistics America, countertop store Terry Stone, wholesaler Z&S Tires, food wholesale distributor Allied DBD, tire manufacturer Zafco International and others.
Ares declined to comment on whether these are potential tenants.
This isn’t the Los Angeles-based firm’s first purchase at Countyline Corporate Park. In June, Ares Income REIT paid $62 million for the property at 410 West 104th Street and an adjacent parcel where FECI had already started construction of a pair of warehouses totaling nearly 215,000 square feet.
Ares Management is also betting on soccer in South Florida. In 2021, it made a $150 million preferred equity investment in David Beckham’s Major League Soccer group Inter Miami CF.
Overall, Ares Management has a portfolio of $341 billion of assets under management across industries such as real estate, infrastructure and private equity, according to its website. The firm was founded in 1997 by Michael Arougheti and Antony Ressler. Ares Industrial REIT’s portfolio spans 241 buildings with a total asset value of $8.9 billion as of September, its website shows.
South Florida’s industrial market has been booming, and was supercharged in recent years as the pandemic turned many consumers to e-commerce.
In the third quarter of last year, Miami-Dade County’s average industrial asking rent hit $14.35 a square foot, up from $8.84 a square foot during the same period of the previous year, according to JLL. The vacancy rate dropped to an all-time low of 1.8 percent.