March 03, 2017 12:45PM
By Katherine Kallergis

After nearly 20 years spent in fragmented office space in Dadeland and a test kitchen in Doral, Pollo Tropical has moved into a newly built-out space near Miami International Airport. 

Pollo Tropical, a subsidiary of Fiesta Restaurant Group, is leasing a 10,000-square-foot building at 7255 Corporate Center Drive, Carol Brooks told The Real Deal. Brooks, president and co-founder of CREC, represented Pollo Tropical in the lease along with senior leasing associate Katie Fernandez-Espinosa. Diana Parker, CBRE senior vice president, represented the Landing at MIA.

The new regional headquarters for Pollo Tropical includes an open floor plan of offices and conference space surrounding a roughly 1,100-square-foot test kitchen. The company went from leasing about 17,000 square feet on noncontiguous floors in an older building in the Dadeland area, plus a test kitchen in Doral, to a smaller and centralized space.

“They had grown over decades into a space that was no longer efficient and it didn’t accommodate their culture. They wanted to consolidate offices, their training facility and test kitchen under one roof with ease of access, abundant onsite parking and onsite amenities,” Brooks told TRD. “Those requirements – the parking and test kitchen – were inherently limited and that pushed us geographically.”

The building is within the Landing at MIA office park, which recently underwent a $17 million renovation, according to a press release. Records show SPUS7 Miami ACC Land LP owns the 50-acre complex. The limited partnership, which is controlled by CBRE Global Investors principal Claudia Walraven, paid $129.25 million for the office community in 2014.

Brooks declined to provide terms of the lease, including rents, but said that in general rents are lower in the Dadeland submarket, and that it’s difficult to compare rent within the airport submarket because of the kitchen and training facilities.

The popular fast-casual chicken restaurant chain added skylights to the building as part of the extensive build-out. Gigi Alvarez of G. Alvarez Studio designed the new headquarters.

“It’s so cool. We really talked a lot about culture; food is what they do, so the kitchen now is exposed to the central work area. Everybody has a view,” she said.