Assurant Takes 78K SF in Waterford Business District

Insurer Assurant signed a 78,000-square-foot lease within Miami’s Waterford Business District. 

The insurance company will occupy three suites, meant for 1,500 employees, inside the 10-story building at 701 Waterford Way, according to a spokesperson for Blanca Commercial Real Estate, which represented landlords Nuveen Real Estate and Allianz’s PIMCO Prime Real Estate. 

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The deal marks the second-largest office lease so far this year in Miami, coming behind MSC Group’s 130,000-square-foot agreement at Block 55 at Sawyer’s Walk in Overtown. 

Assurant will relocate from its 75-acre campus in the South Miami Heights neighborhood in June 2025, said a spokesperson for the company. Since last year, the Atlanta-based company has been trying to offload the property, which houses a 499,425-square-foot office building and was mostly completed in the 1980s. 

Miami-Dade County was about to pay $160 million for the campus, but the sale fell apart after two appraisers valued the price about 30 percent above market value.

Assurant’s new home, Waterford Business District, is located just south of Miami International Airport, spanning 250 acres and housing 1.65 million square feet of office space. Tenants include Subway, Toyota, FedEx, Sony, Gilead and Novartis. 

Nuveen and PIMCO’s brokers included Blanca’s Juan Ruiz, Andres del Corral, Jack Davidson, Jessy Aguila and Tere Blanca. A representative for CBRE’s Brent Woodruff, Matthew Goodman and Tyler Wyant, who represented Assurant, declined to comment. 

Julia Echikson can be reached at jechikson@commercialobserver.com.