Midwest Industrial Funds recently purchased a 218,064-square-foot manufacturing and distribution building in McHenry, Illinois. Located on 20 acres at 1301 Ridgeview Drive, the building was originally developed as a manufacturing and distribution facility for Motorola and was vacant at the time of acquisition. Suzanne Serino of Colliers International represented the seller on the sale.
“The property is in a high‐end business park and is as modern and functional as it gets in McHenry County,” said Jed Degnan, director of acquisitions at Midwest Industrial. “We started negotiating on this property back in the late spring, but we were having a hard time getting to the seller’s price point. Suzanne did a terrific job finding a lease prospect in Disk.com to lease a portion of the building. That was a big key to help us bridge the gap and get to the seller’s price point while still making the risk/reward economics work on our end.”
Midwest Industrial completed the tenant improvements for Disk.com, who just moved into the facility a couple of weeks ago. The high-image, precast concrete and glass building was constructed in 1995 and features 28-foot clear ceilings, 20 exterior loading docks, heavy power and parking for over 500 cars plus 40 trailers. Serino is marketing the remaining space in the building for Midwest Industrial, which consists of 50,000 to 108,803 square feet, with above-standard loading and parking and up to 24,534 square feet of office space.
This transaction was the second of its kind to be successfully closed by the team at Midwest Industrial in the last few months. In September, they acquired a 73,000-square-foot vacant manufacturing facility in Elgin, Illinois for Germany-based Faber‐Castell Cosmetics for their U.S. headquarters.
“These market-maker transactions are complex and very challenging for typical investors to pull off. They require a lot of trust between the parties, hard work, quick decision making and experience to pull off from an acquisition and simultaneous leasing perspective,” said Justin Fierz, principal at Midwest Industrial. “Our company is set up and thrives in these sort of fast moving, multi‐party negotiations and our entire staff did a super job of executing on hundreds of steps and details to pull this off and make it a win/win for all parties.”
