Amazon warehouse in Polk County sold for $170 million
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Jun 14, 2021

Another Amazon.com facility in Polk County has sold for a blistering price.

Amazon's 1.078 million-square-foot warehouse in Auburndale has sold to a corporate entity linked to Boston-based Eaton Vance Real Estate Investment Group for $170 million in a deal that closed June 2, according to Polk County property records.

Eaton Vance is owned by Morgan Stanley; Morgan Stanley paid $7 billion for Eaton Vance in March.

The seller was Prologis Inc., which developed the warehouse after landing Amazon as a tenant in 2019. When Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) confirmed the deal, it was the e-commerce giant's fourth location in Polk County.

Representatives from Prologis and Eaton Vance did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday.

The warehouse sits on 146 acres on C. Fred Jones Boulevard in Auburndale, south of Interstate 4 near the State Road 559 interchange. Prologis paid $10 million for the site in 2019.

Amazon-occupied warehouses have become one of the hottest investments in Central Florida. The pricing of the Auburndale facility — roughly $157 per square foot — is in line with another recently sold Amazon warehouse. Lakeland Dragstrip Logistics Center, which Amazon also occupies, sold for around $108 million or $150 per square foot in early April.

Those sales are encouraging developers to make massive speculative bets on the region's industrial market: In Lakeland, Orlando-based Parkway Inc. and Silverpeak Real Estate Partners are planning to kick off a new industrial park with a speculative 708,000-square-foot warehouse.