Florida's largest warehouse has sold for $126.5 million
Florida Keystone warehouse

By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Jul 30, 2020

A Tampa-based team from Cushman & Wakefield Inc. has brokered the sale of Florida’s largest warehouse.

The Florida Keystone Industrial Center in Ocala has sold for $126.5 million, Cushman said. The warehouse spans 1.93 million square feet and is fully leased to a

Costco Corp.-owned logistics company and Transformco.

Cushman’s Mike Davis, Adam Spies, Rick Brugge, Rick Colon, Kevin Donner and Dominic Montazemi, with assistance from Zach Eicholtz and Brooke Tulley, represented the seller Reich Brothers.

Cushman’s equity, debt and structured finance team — Jason Hochman, Brian Linnihan, Michael Ryan and Ron Granite — secured $102 million in acquisition financing through PIMCO on behalf of the buyers, IP Capital Partners and Torchlight Investors.

Lakeland and the Interstate 4 corridor have long been the epicenter of Central Florida’s red-hot industrial real estate market, but Ocala is starting to come into its own, between interest from institutional investors and household-name tenants.

“Ocala has emerged as one of the premier statewide distribution locations for Florida,” Davis said in a statement. “This property, which is 100 percent leased, has significantly below-market rents providing the investor future upside upon rollover.”

The deal comes just a year after Davis’ team sold an Amazon-leased warehouse in Ocala to Lexington Realty Trust for $58.4 million, then a record price-per-square-foot for Ocala.

The industrial action in Ocala is also spurring interest in Pasco County real estate for warehouses, though industrial developers there are in heavy competition for land with homebuilders. But with the county’s proximity to a large population base, access to Interstate 75 and a growing workforce, some developers see opportunity there.