One of Pinellas’ Last Remaining Large Industrial Sites Sells

A Boston real estate firm has purchased a roughly 30-acre industrial property in Pinellas Park.

Gaston Trees Debris Recycling sold the site at 3565 126^th Ave. to Albany Road Real Estate Partners in a $21 million deal.

Gaston, which collects, hauls and recycles wood debris, will lease back 10 acres of the site.

The property is “one of the last remaining industrial land sites of this size in Pinellas County, the most densely populated county in Florida,” Cushman and Wakefield Vich Chairman Rick Brugge said in a prepared statement. “With in-place income as an Industrial Outdoor Storage (IOS) site, it presents a unique opportunity as a covered land play for potential future industrial development.”

Brugge and brokers John Jackson, Mike Davis, Dominic Montazemi, Rick Colon, JT Faircloth and Casey Perry represented the seller.

The GTDR family-owned and operated company started in 1972 in North Central Florida. In the early 1980s, it generated a substantial amount of tree debris daily and was forced to dispose of the debris. Following a state mandate in 1985 restricting the disposal of vegetation in Florida landfills, GTDR began operating the first tree, yard, and land-clearing debris recycling center in the state, according to the company’s website.

Albany Road Real Estate, which has more than $2 billion of assets, took out a $12.61 million mortgage loan from First Bank for the purchase.

While GTDR will still operate at the current site, Jingoli Power, a services provider for complex electric utility construction projects, will lease 12 acres on the property for storing equipment and supplies.

According to a Loopnet listing from Cushman and Wakefield and the new buyers, 2 to 7.5 acres are available for lease at the site.

The heavy industrial use-zoned property can accommodate up to 450,000 square feet of new development.

Albany Road Real Estate Partners owns multiple properties throughout the state, including the Meridian Concourse portfolio in Clearwater and the Lake Point Commerce Center in Orlando.

The last significant industrial transaction closed in August when Tampa-based development group Harrod Properties sold the Brooker Creek south building.

The 130,000-square-foot building in Oldsmar, which was the first industrial project supported by Pinellas County’s Employment Sites Program, sold in a $22.3 million deal to Texas-based firm JD Warmack Woodlands LP.