A joint venture between Coconut Creek-based Butters Construction & Development and San Francisco-based Bristol Group purchased a closed golf course in Deerfield Beach that they plan to convert into a business park.

The project, with about 1 million square feet of office and industrial space, would be one of the largest new business parks under development in South Florida. It already secured government zoning approval. Gator Development, a Deerfield Beach-based company managed by Dana J. Eller, sold the 74.4-acre property for $10 million to Hillsboro Technology Center, an affiliate of Butters and Bristol.

The property is north of Hillsboro Boulevard between Fairway Drive and Northwest 4th Avenue.

The property last traded for $4.2 million in 2007.

The joint venture partnership also paid $100,000 to David Coppa’s Hillsboro Executive Center North for a 6,314-square-foot strip of land along Fairway Drive that could be used to expand the entrance road.

Butters’ Thomas Viscount brokered the deal.

Malcolm Butters, CEO of the local developer, said this would be the first new traditional business park developed in Broward County in more than a decade. The first phase will be two buildings for a combined 250,000 square feet, he said. One building will be 90 percent industrial and 10 percent office, with 32-foot ceilings and a minimum tenant space of 25,000 square feet. The other building will be 20 to 25 percent office, with the rest industrial, a 24-foot ceiling and a minimum tenant space of 5,000 square feet.

The first building will be a large distribution facility like Amazon.com and the other will be office flex space where you might get light manufacturing, pharmaceutical companies, or a showroom in the front with a warehouse in the back,

Butters said.

Butters is the same company that co-developed the Amazon.com distribution center in Miami-Dade County.

Miami industrial has been very active and now so is Broward, although it was a little later to recover,

Butters said.

He plans to break ground in April on the first two buildings, along with a host of infrastructure improvements in the park, and road widening with new traffic signals at the access point of Fairway Drive and Hillsboro Boulevard. The park will also have a shuttle that runs to the nearby Tri-Rail station, Butters said. The first two buildings should be ready in fall 2016, he added.

“We are happy to be east of Interstate 95. That is a very unique position for a commercial development as most of it is in west Broward in the suburbs,” Butters said. “We have no traffic lights between us and the busiest highway in South Florida.”

Butters said the business park should have eight or nine buildings during the five to seven years it takes to build it out. The park will eventually have about 1,500 employees, he said.

Source: SFBJ