Ashley Furniture buys Lakeland industrial building for $70.54M

Wisconsin-based Ashley Furniture Industries has bought a 705,000-square-foot industrial facility in Lakeland as the building’s previous owner plans to expand the park its located in.

The cross-dock facility — known as LCP 200 — is part of Lakeland Central Park which is being developed by the Orlando real estate investment firm Parkway.

Parkway announced the sale in statement Wednesday afternoon, but a spokesperson declined to name the buyer or the sale price.

Polk County property records, however, show the buyer is an LLC belonging to Ashley Furniture Industries' Arcadia, Wisconsin, corporate office. The records show it paid $70.54 million.

It was not immediately clear Wednesday what the furniture manufacturer and retailer planned for the facility.

Ashley, according to its website, currently operates 75 stores and outlets in Florida. Of those, 11 are along the Gulf Coast.

Lakeland Central Park is a 740-acre industrial park just off of Polk Parkway not far from Interstate 4.

Parkway, in the statement, says the property has up to 5 million square feet of developable industrial space aimed at manufacturing, logistics and distribution.

The sale, the firm says in the statement, “paves the way for Parkway's immediate expansion” of the park.

That expansion includes building a connection to a signalized intersection at Airport Road to provide direct access to I4 via Polk Parkway; building a 260,000-square-foot cross-dock industrial building; and making every having each site in the park “pad ready” for buildings between 162,000 square feet and 1.65 million square feet.