NAI Hiffman’s industrial capital markets team facilitated the sale of a three-building industrial portfolio that comprises assets in Bartlett, Illinois, a western suburb of Chicago, as well as in Phoenix, Arizona.
The GSI Family Office, along with Greco/DeRosa Investment Group, a wholly owned subsidiary of The Greco Family, sold the three properties to a discretionary fund managed by CBRE Global Investors. The two suburban Chicago assets are located at 1323 Brewster Creek Boulevard and 1550 Hecht Drive in Bartlett.
GSI and Greco/DeRosa were exclusively represented by NAI Hiffman executive vice president Pat Sullivan, vice president Ryan Chambers and executive vice president Jeff Fischer. Tony Lydon, national director, and John Lydon, vice president of JLL assisted in the sale of the Phoenix property.
“Nationwide, there is great demand for core industrial properties, especially with a cold storage component,” said Sullivan. “The pandemic accelerated a trend already underway—consumers’ growing demand for fresh and frozen foods—and it’s likely to continue. With the limited availability of stabilized, core warehouse product in the Chicago area and Phoenix, and the cold storage component of the portfolio, the buildings attracted significant interest.”
Built in 2017, 1323 Brewster Creek Boulevard is a 421,354-square-foot building with 48 docks, 32-foot clear heights and 800 parking spaces. It was the first building in the Brewster Creek Business Park, which now includes over 1 million square feet of food-related companies. Built in 2006, 1550 Hecht Drive is Greco Foods’ headquarters. It is a 209,628-square-foot warehouse with offices and a cold storage component. The portfolio was fully stabilized at the time of sale with a weighted average remaining lease term of approximately eight years and a diverse rent roll of seven tenants across the three buildings.
“The very strong market convinced us this was the right time to sell these assets and get capital to invest back into our real estate development business,” said Ron DeRosa, principal of Greco/DeRosa. “Pat and his team brought us a number of competitive offers, and we were able to come to terms in a timely fashion despite any extra hurdles caused by COVID-19. The Greco family had assembled a portfolio of fully leased quality facilities that made the deal work even during a trying time in our economy.”
In the past, investors usually would not pursue an opportunity with a cold storage component because of the special use nature of the asset, but today that is a positive and part of the reason investors were attracted to the portfolio, Sullivan said. Chicago’s cold storage market totals more than 11 million square feet and had just a 2.5 percent vacancy rate in second-quarter 2020, according to NAI Hiffman analysis of CoStar data.
