By transforming this mostly industrial-warehouse site into a heavily fortified, infrastructure-rich telecommunications park, the Hollywood, FL-based commercial real estate development company earlier this year signed leases with credit-rich tenants such as Telefonica, Exodus and BellSouth. More recently it attracted investment dollars in a partnership agreement with a group led by Dallas-based Olympus Real Estate Corp.
Success is coming a little slower, however, for two other sites marketed as telecommunications development properties under the LightSpeed brand.
In response to a softer South Florida economy, the developer is rethinking the marketing strategy at LightSpeed Gateway Center, a 350,000-sf building on Coral Way in the Miami-Dade submarket of Coral Gables, and LightSpeed Fort Lauderdale, a 12-acre industrial-warehouse park in the Hollywood submarket on Cypress Creek Road off Interstate I-95.
"We're refining the marketing strategy of the projects," Richard Swerdlow, Swerdlow Real Estate vice president of business development, tells GlobeSt.com. "They were always going to be data centers. We're just introducing people into the data center environment."
At LightSpeed Miami, for instance, many of the tenants are constructing highly technical switching, routing and server systems such as BellSouth's planned Network Access Point--an operation that will manage the interchange of commercial Internet traffic.
At the two other properties, Swerdlow says, the company is recruiting a mixture of tenants that may need off-site facilities that offer enhanced amenities such as multiple alternative fiber-optic and power infrastructure, regulated fire-suppression equipment and reinforced hurricane protection.
"We're developing projects for what we think is an underserved market for these types of facilities, where (information technology) professionals and IT companies have office space within a data center in the same facility," Swerdlow says.
The decision to refine the marketing strategy is a practical approach, say real estate market participants such as Wayne D. Ramoski, director of industrial brokerage services for Cushman & Wakefield of Florida Inc.
"Telecom is no longer such a targeted market (in South Florida)," Ramoski tells GlobeSt.com. "Developers are getting creative by expanding their tenant base through similar uses. To remain profitable, they have to diversify their tenant base."
Although Swerdlow wouldn't talk about the subject, it is expected the company could possibly alter its expectations on asking rents. It is difficult to get a clear picture of what the company is seeking because all of the LightSpeed products are in different submarkets.
Rents probably would range somewhere below the estimated $13 per sf the company is asking for space in the LightSpeed park in the Airport/West market, local real estate brokers familiar with the project tell GlobeSt.com on condition of anonymity.
The company is able to ask about $5.55 per sf above the prevailing market rate of $7.45 a sf for industrial-warehouse space in the Airport/West market because of the fortified infrastructure, brokers tell GlobeSt.com.
"The idea isn't to compete on rents but to provide some base for access to the data centers within the rent," Swerdlow says. "When you lease space, you're getting a base level of power, connectivity and secure service collocation space. It will be a monthly fee per sf, inclusive of office and basic data space."
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