The recent activity maintains the strength of the Gratigny/North Dade area, which has historically had high occupancy rates. "I do not view this recent activity as a growing interest but rather as testimony that the Gratigny Central is a very established industrial park that has maintained a very high occupancy rate over the years," Smith says.

AMB Property Corp., an institutional landlord, acquired six properties totaling about 10% of the park, and "buildings that typically would have sold to users were sold to investors," he says. "The end result was a lot of space was put up for lease in a very short period of time. We have since leased the properties we sold them. Rates have increased slightly, but so has the quality of the product being delivered."

The Miami industrial market overall has seen a steady rise in demand, with the overall vacancy rate at the end of the third quarter at 8.6%, down 0.7 percentage points from 9.3% a year earlier, according to a new market report by Cushman & Wakefield. And although leasing activity is down 21.2 percentage points from this time last year, it still totaled 4.6 million sf. The third-quarter leasing activity was especially strong, experiencing almost 65% of the year-to-date leasing activity. "Due in part to this strong leasing activity, the overall year-to-date absorption is positive 135,209 sf," the report states. The Dietrich Industries deal is the tenth transaction in the last 16 months and the fourth lease so far this year that Smith and Ramoski have completed for AMB Partners II LLP.