Moishe Mana, developer and entrepreneur. Photo: J. Albert Diaz/ALM

The pioneering developer of Miami's Wynwood Arts District Moishe Mana is getting into the dairy business, buying McArthur Dairy's South Florida facilities for $16.5 million in a bankruptcy sale.

Mana bought the McArthur plant at 6821 NE Second Ave. near Little Haiti and distribution facilities in West Palm Beach and Fort Myers.

The purchase closed Tuesday, several weeks after Mana Saves McArthur LLC won a bankruptcy bid in Texas to buy the South Florida facilities from McArthur parent Dean Foods Dairy Group, the nation's largest dairy company.

Dallas-based Dean Foods, which bought McArthur Dairy 40 years ago, filed for Chapter 11 reorganization due to falling milk consumption last November even before COVID-19 forced many dairy farms to dump their milk due to the fresh loss of restaurant and school customers.

Dairy Farmers of America Inc., a milk marketing cooperative owned by dairy farmers, was the winning bidder for most of the Dean Foods' assets, acquiring them for $433 million last week after a Justice Department antitrust review.

McArthur Dairy was founded in 1929 by South Florida pioneer J. Neville McArthur as the Great Depression and years later grew as the economy rebounded and South Florida's population increased.

Mana's ventures vary from makeup to document storage. His first big venture in the U.S. was Moishe's Moving Logistics, a moving company started in the 1980s in New York.

In Miami, he has amassed over 50 downtown properties, making him the biggest landlord in the neighborhood. Many of the retail properties are empty, but he envisions a campus-like Silicon Valley that's a hub for tech companies from Asia to the U.S. and Latin America. His holdings total 1.3 million square feet of buildings.

Mana won't be demolishing the low and mid-rise buildings in downtown to make way for towers but rather he would be gut-renovating them with an eye toward preserving their eclectic architectural facades. There are few exceptions where he plans to demolish existing buildings to replace them with high-rise micro-units.

With his latest purchase, Mana plans to build on the McArthur brand. He is looking at both dairy and nondairy products.

His McArthur Dairy acquisitions include 158,657 square feet of buildings and 13 acres of land, including the McArthur plant, as well as a 9,280-square-foot building on a 78,400-square-foot lot in Fort Myers.

Mana already owned another Miami McArthur site, buying the 173,006-square-foot lot at 2451 NW Seventh Ave. for $8.5 million in 2015.

His purchase in Bankruptcy Court includes the real estate as well as furniture, trucks, trailers and fixtures.

Mana is partnering with Cream-O-Land owners Jay and Robert Schneier to run the plant and delivery, according to The Real Deal real estate publication, which already reported on the acquisition.

The transaction has been touted as a way to keep the dairy operation from going out of business.

"Not only is this a phenomenal real estate transaction, but we were able to save South Florida's dairy industry," Cary Cohen, Blanca Commercial Real Estate executive vice president, said in a statement.

Cohen and Mika Mattingly, Colliers International South Florida executive managing director-urban core, represented both Mana and seller Dean Foods Dairy. Cohen and Mattingly are based in Miami.

They worked under a deadline after the bankruptcy court approved the sale in early April while working through logistic issues created by social-distancing requirements imposed in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

During the three-week due diligence period, tours of the property were taken with extra caution, Mattingly, who worked on behalf of Mana on most of his downtown acquisitions, said in a news release.

"This was a challenging transaction since we had less than three weeks for the due diligence," Mattingly said, "while coordinating with nearly 30 parties in the middle of the coronavirus lockdown."

Mana's attorney, Bruce Fischman of The Fischman Law Firm in Miami, told The Real Deal that Mana would keep 130 McArthur Dairy employees on the job.