Al Rex, left, and Marty McGrogan, right, of Walker & Dunlop.

The Graham Cos., best known as the developer of Miami Lakes, has borrowed $120 million to refinance 29 properties it owns in the town in a transaction aided by Walker & Dunlop.

The Graham Cos. started as a pioneering dairy in 1930s South Florida, eventually growing into a development company. It owns and operates everything from apartments to hotels, and still is active in farming with a dairy in Glades County and a pecan orchard and an Angus beef ranch, both in Georgia.

The company borrowed from an affiliate of New York-based global insurer American International Group Inc. to refinance real estate ranging from shopping plazas to a hospital.

Walker & Dunlop managing director Al Rex, vice president Marty McGrogan and senior analyst Ariel Zucker, all in Fort Lauderdale, closed the deal June 21. They represented both lender and borrower.

“They are a long-term real estate owner, and they feel that rates are in a cycle where they are very good right now, and they wanted to refinance 29 properties and put them into a pool and put long-term financing, 15-year financing on the portfolio,” Rex said.

Walker & Dunlop declined to disclose the exact loan interest rate,  saying only that it's less than 4 percent.

Loan proceeds also might be used to fund Miami Lakes projects, according to The Graham Cos.' website. Details on what projects and whether some of them would be new developments were not disclosed.

The Graham Cos. president and CEO Stuart Wyllie didn't return a request for comment by deadline. Lender AIG declined to comment.

The deal was complex for the Walker & Dunlop team since it had to structure one loan for 29 diverse properties.

“The logistics of trying to encapsulate 29 properties into a package that's a loan package that is consistent, concise and what the lender needs” was challenging, McGrogan said. “It was actually easier than expected, but it still was a monumental task having this many properties together.”

Walker & Dunlop worked with Graham, AIG as well as many others.

“You have 29 appraisals, you could have that many surveys, environmentals, property condition reports. So mobilizing the third parties and organizing the information and managing the timeline just took a lot of planning, but our team was able to find the right and best partners that could perform,” McGrogan said.

The properties comprise 1.2 million square feet, which means the deal breaks down to $100 per square foot.

They are a balanced mix of retail industrial and residential real estate, according to Walker & Dunlop.

The properties include a retail building at 7435 Miami Lakes Drive, a Publix shopping plaza at 15000 Miami Lakes Drive, a CVS shopping plaza at 15395 NW 82nd Ave., the acute care Promise Hospital of Miami at 14001 NW 82nd Ave., a medical office building at 14701 NW 77th Ave., The Promenade office building at 16351 NW 67th Ave., a five-building industrial property in the 14500 block of NW 60th Ave., and the St. Tropez Apartments at 16185 NW 64th Ave.

All the properties are within a mile of downtown Miami Lakes.

AIG and Graham have worked together in the past.

“This lender and this borrower had done business together over a very long period of time, and I think the whole nature of what we do with a lot of life companies is we customize the transaction to the needs of the borrower,” Rex said. “It's really about what their goals and objectives are.”

The Graham Cos. traces its roots to the 1920s when Ernest “Cap” Graham moved to South Florida to manage sugar cane operations for the Pennsylvania Sugar Co. When the company closed its operations here 11 years later, Graham bought out the land, livestock and machinery to  open Graham Dairy Inc., according to Graham's website.

The family later grew their company into a development company with Ernest Graham's three sons working on the master-planned community that's now Miami Lakes. The sons gained fame in their own right: Bob serving as U.S. senator and Florida governor, Phil as The Washington Post publisher and William as company president.