Amancio Ortega’s Pontegadea pays $113M for Hialeah cold storage

Spanish billionaire Amancio Ortega’s real estate family office is expanding its cold storage business, acquiring its second Hialeah freezer facility in seven months.

An affiliate of Ortega’s Pontegadea paid a cool $113 million for Bridge Point Cold Logistics Center, a 312,000-square-foot warehouse at 3995 West 108th Street, records and Vizzda show. The deal breaks down to just over $360 per square foot.

The seller, a joint venture between Chicago-based Bridge Industrial and Newark, New Jersey-based PGIM Real Estate, paid $11 million for the 20-acre site in 2020, and completed the cold storage warehouse last year, records show. 

The property is fully leased to FreezPak, a New Jersey-based food logistics company. 

In June, the same Pontegadea affiliate acquired another cold storage facility in Hialeah from Blackstone for $43.3 million. Ortega, founder of global clothing retailer Zara, founded Pontegadea to handle his private equity and real estate investments. The firm’s first purchase was an office building in Madrid for around $556 million in 2011. 

In the U.S., Pontegadea’s commercial real estate holdings exceed $1 billion, including an entire Lincoln Road block in Miami Beach, downtown Miami’s Southeast Financial Center and the Kimpton Epic Hotel, also in downtown. 

Pontegadea’s purchase of Bridge Point Cold Logistics Center is the second nine-figure industrial deal this month. Boston-based Longpoint Partners acquired a portfolio of 25 South Florida industrial buildings from Conshohocken, Pennsylvania-based Seagis Property Group. Longpoint paid a combined $115.6 million for warehouses in Broward County and $146.5 million for industrial buildings in Miami-Dade. 

South Florida’s industrial market remains the region’s bellwether commercial real estate sector as institutional investors vie for tenants seeking warehouse space. This month, national manufacturer Pella Windows & Doors paid $45 million for a warehouse in Medley that houses the headquarters of another door and windows maker. 

In November, a joint venture led by Coconut Creek-based Butters Group sold a recently completed warehouse in Plantation to a pharmacy owner planning on using the facility for his business. An entity managed by David Rabbani, president of Hallandale Pharmacy in Dania Beach, paid $29.8 million for Sunrise Logistics Center.