Lakeland industrial project to get upgrades after $66M purchase

MDH Partners, an Atlanta commercial real estate investment firm, plans to make improvements to a Lakeland industrial portfolio it just bought for $66.7 million.

The three-building portfolio is 557,100 square feet across three buildings. It sits on 28.5 acres at 3490 County Line Road off of Interstate 4 in Polk County.

The firm says in a statement that the rear-load buildings are currently 35% leased to four national tenants and the remaining 391,240 square feet can accommodate a single large user or be broken up into suites as small as 15,000 square feet.

The capital improvement plan includes funding speculative suites, completing office buildouts and upgrading lighting, signage and park-wide appearance.

The goal, says MDH, is to ensure tenants can occupy space quickly and the property “shows as the best-in-class option in the market.” The work will begin immediately.

A spokesperson did not respond to questions about how much the company planned to spend on the capital improvement project.

MDH bought the portfolio — buildings 100 through 300 — at the Lakeland Commerce Center last month from developer Stonemont Financial Group.

Stonemont sold a fourth building in the center last year to LG Electronics USA. The South Korean consumer electronics manufacturer paid $50 million for the 348,740-square-foot cross-dock facility.

MDH’s purchase at the Lakeland Commerce Center immediately follows a two-building, 1.1 million-square-foot industrial portfolio buy near Kansas City. In all, the firm says in the statement, it has bought more than 2 million square feet in the past 90 days and is currently investing a $1.2 billion discretionary fund.

Its acquisition strategy is to buy well-located, institutional industrial properties with vacancies and then make improvements to lease them up. This, according to the firm, “reflects a strategy MDH intends to repeat.”

MDH currently owns or manages about 40 million square feet across 34 markets in 19 states. Among its assets are eight properties in Florida, including a 201,809-square-foot facility in Haines City; the two-building, 208,236-square-foot 301 Corporate Center in Bradenton; and the six-building, 444,923-square-foot Gatewood Corporate Center, which is also in Bradenton.

The firm says it continues to look for industrial properties in the state “across the risk spectrum.”