Large Florida Real Estate Sale Announced

A Florida real estate developer has just purchased 537 acres of the Florida Research Park in Palm Beach County.

It is touting the sale as one of the last contiguous tracts of buildable land in the South Florida real estate market.

First Industrial Realty-Trust said it paid an undisclosed amount for the land along Beeline Highway and its vested 6.2 million square feet of commercial real estate development rights.

The company joined forces with the California State Teacher’s Retirement System, the second-largest pension fund in the nation, to purchase the property.

Jeremy Shapiro, the company’s senior regional director for south Florida said the biggest benefit of the Florida real estate deal was that all the development approvals were already taken care of.

“Finding something not approved and trying to go through the approval processes is both time consuming and risky.”

The company plans to build out the property in phases including both built-to-suit and speculative development, and the company expressly intends to build research and development/flex facilities to “accommodate a growing demand for research space, principally from the bio tech and bio medical sectors.”

In other words, no Florida mortgages for home buyers on this land, one of the biggest available tracts in Southern Florida.

It will be used for commercial purposes, to hopefully boost the region’s already booming economy, assuming the sale proceeds.

SOURCE: South Florida Sun-Sentinel