In a growing office market, Blue Lagoon district will spend $10M to stay relevant
The Blue Lagoon office community is revamping itself with a $10 million makeover. And a name change.
The 250-acre office park near Miami International, Waterford at Blue Lagoon, re-branded itself as the Waterford Business District on Monday, said Tere Blanca, chairman and chief executive officer of Blanca Commercial Real Estate. The community will also be injected with $10 million in capital and land improvements in the coming months in 2020 to attract and retain tenants.
Nuveen and Allianz, who own the biggest shares of the park, want to remain competitive in Miami’s growing office market, Blanca said. She said, “Having products that stay in tune with what employees need is important.”
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Real estate investment firms and joint venture partners Allianz Real Estate, based in Munich and Paris, and Nuveen Real Estate, headquartered in Chicago, own 60%, or 1.8 million square feet of the total three million square feet, of the park. The partners led the change after the community celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2019.
New amenities are expected to be added from March through June. The additions include renovated conference rooms, a Freebie shuttle to travel throughout the Waterford Business District, bike sharing programs, outdoor yoga and boot camp sessions, weekly food trucks, quarterly networking events and professional development seminars. Executives will have exclusive access to a free Tesla service to-and-from their office and Miami International.
The community’s cafe is expected to open in June. District Cafe will operate from the ground floor of 1000 Waterford at 1000 NW 57th Court and serve breakfast and lunch.
Existing amenities include a daycare center, post office and security.
Blanca’s team will measure the success of the new amenities through the new Waterford Business District mobile application. Employees will be notified of different events on the application and reserve their spot by their phone.
Asking rents will remain the same as last year despite the updates, Blanca said, from $25 per square foot to $32 per square foot triple net. The average direct asking rent is $32 per square foot in the Miami Airport office market on a gross basis, according to the fourth quarter 2019 JLL Office Insight report.
What is the state of Miami’s office market?
The office market in Miami continues to expand with more inventory flooding the market. Miami-Dade County had the largest amount of office space under construction in 2019 since 2009, according to the third quarter 2019 JLL office market report.
The market is absorbing some of the new inventory, according to the fourth quarter 2019 JLL Office Insight report. The report said the office market in Miami-Dade County is stable with a total vacancy rate of 16.4% in the fourth quarter of 2019, a slight drop from the fourth quarter of 2018 which had 16.5% vacancy. There were 120,470 square feet year-to-date net absorption, 1,919,365 square feet under construction and an average asking rent of $43.40 per square foot.
Still, existing office buildings, including the Wells Fargo Center in downtown Miami, are undergoing multimillion dollar renovations to remain competitive in the expanding market.
“There’s a shift in the employee base from baby boomers being content with sitting at a desk for eight hours,” said Cameron Tallon, JLL Miami’s vice president of agency leasing, “to millennials wanting amenities if they’re going to spend eight hours in an office.”
This story was originally published February 24, 2020 at 7:00 AM.
