"The owner has invested a huge amount of money to bring in a significant number of multicarrier fiber-optic lines and to provide redundant power sources," says Paul N. Isenbergh, a Cushman & Wakefield senior director who specializes in Miami-Dade industrial properties. "These are buildings that normally have backup generators to keep them operating 24/7." Isenbergh would not venture any speculation about the terms of the Telefonica deal.

Besides advanced infrastructure, it appears Telefonica DataCorp., a provider of global telecommunications services that serves about 300 million customers, found the deal palatable because of the presence of BellSouth Florida in the industrial-office park.

The telephone company leased space in the park in February to develop a multimedia-intermedia exchange or a telecommunications node commonly called a network access point, which speeds broadband transfer of Internet traffic.

Telefonica DataCorp. disclosed this week in a prepared statement that the new building will become its first US data center when it is ready for occupancy later this year. It will primarily contain equipment used to host electronic-commerce and Internet services.

The deal with Telefonica fulfills for LightSpeed Infrastructure what many owners of industrial-office space in the Airport West submarket sought over the past year or so. In a bid to raise asking rents, many property owners marketed their warehouse-distribution facilities as potential sites for telecommunications hotels.

"Over the last year, there have been many large industrial buildings that were put under contract by many a hopeful telecom owner," Isenbergh tells GlobeSt.com. "With the exception of a few, most of those deals failed to close, because of the reluctance on the part of the buyers about the ability to quickly retrofit those buildings."

Since that virtual gold rush, Isenbergh adds, most of those property owners are now remarketing their properties as standard warehouse distribution space. Cushman & Wakefield statistics estimated the average asking rent on such properties at about $7.41 per sf.

"Everybody and their brother rushed to the industrial markets in an attempt to convert these buildings into telcom hotels or telcom facilities," Isenbergh says.