The company bought 4.67 acres at Northwest 12th Street and Milam Dairy Road, just southwest of Miami International Airport, for $4 million, or approximately $856,531 per acre. The seller was Venamerica Florida LLP, a partnership led by Robert Cambó, CEO of Alliance Cos. Inc., a locally-based commercial real estate development and brokerage firm.
The new owner is not 100% sure it will develop a hotel, but the company is an investor and has been a hotel operator in the past, and that is one of the primary possibilities, Ernesto Casal of Alliance Cos., who brokered the sale, tells GlobeSt.com. If a hotel is developed, it likely would be a garden-style hotel with two or three stories and not a high-rise, he adds.
However, the land also lends itself to office, industrial or retail uses, Casal says. "It lends itself to be utilized for other purposes."
The property is highly visible from two major highways, he says, and geographically it's the center of Dade County. "Accessibility to Miami International Airport is important as well," he adds. "All three of those factors have provided this property with increased value."
Lejeune Airport Park Suites purchased the land to satisfy a tax issue. The company was one of the property owners displaced in eminent domain proceedings on the east side, as the airport looks at doing a grand central station, a multibillion-dollar undertaking.
The piece of land is the last piece in a 6.83-acre site that formerly was known as the Venamerica property. Venamerica Florida bought the whole tract of land in January 2001 for about $4 million. Since then, Venamerica Florida has sold two other parcels to Wendy's International, which is in the permit process, and to Safeguard, which plans to put a mini-storage facility there.
Venamerica sold the land in parcels. The combined sales of the 6.83 acres represents a nearly 100% return on equity for Venamerica Florida.
"This was an old dilapidated property" that Alliance principals bought, Casal says. "They thought the property in parts had greater value than the whole piece."
"This sale exemplifies the growing strength of the Airport West real estate market," Cambó says in a statement. "Some speculated that we overpaid for this property, but the market has proved that (we) were on target from the onset."
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