CORAL GABLES, FL-Nippon Express is moving into the Airport Business Center business park. The global logistics solutions company is taking down 34,337-square-feet of industrial space in the Miami Airport-West submarket.

Flagler Real Estate Services (FRES), Flagler’s brokerage and property management arm, represented the landlord, AMB Property Corporation. George Pino, a senior vice president at FRES, led the four-month negotiation with the tenant’s representative, Steve Medwin, managing director at Jones Lang LaSalle.

Pino says the center’s distribution facility, coupled with its proximity to Miami International Airport’s cargo operation, made it a natural fit for Nippon. The business park is within a few blocks from the Miami International Airport Cargo area and a few minutes’ drive to Florida’s Turnpike and the Port of Miami. Nippon Express will relocate its entire Miami operations to Airport Business Center
 
Located at 3409 NW 72nd Avenue, Airport Business Center is an AMB-owned multi-use business park that is managed and leased by FRES.  The entire business park spans 600,000 square feet with a distribution facility, warehouses, and industrial, flex, office and retail space. The center has performed well despite a down market.

The Miami-Dade County industrial market’s third consecutive quarter of absorption gains edged vacancy down 20 basis points to 9.0 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010, according to Grubb & Ellis. The modest quarterly net absorption of 423,000 square feet brought the year-end tally to 2.8 million square feet. That’s a sharp reversal from the absorption loss of 3.4 million square feet in 2009 and the greatest annual gain in the market since 2005.

Grubb expects vacancy to continue to decline as the economy stabilizes and international trade improves. The firm predicts concessions will still be abundant, but will start to recede in core submarkets. And if there is any new industrial construction, Grubb says, it will be sparse and limited to self-financed developers.