Blackstone Sells 1.9 MSF Portfolio
With this deal, an investor is making its debut in a major midwestern market.
Nicola Wealth Real Estate has entered the Minneapolis-St. Paul industrial market with the acquisition of a portfolio of 22 industrial and flex buildings totaling 1.9 million square feet on 151 acres of land.
The portfolio consists of two collections of buildings known as the Minneapolis North Sub-Portfolio and the Dell Five Sub-Portfolio. The 22 properties are spread across the Minneapolis-St. Paul market, which boasts a low vacancy rate of 3.6 percent as of the second quarter, with an existing inventory of approximately 374 million square feet, according to NWRE.
While the seller was not disclosed, several assets in the portfolio were previously owned by Link Logistics, Blackstone’s industrial arm, CommercialEdge data shows. The list includes buildings in Dell Five Business Park and Lake Drive Business Center in Chanhassen, Minn., as well as Beacon Bluff Business Park in St. Paul, among others. Link Logistics had acquired several of these properties in a $665 million, 7 million-square-foot portfolio deal from CSM Corp. in April 2020. That deal included 5.7 million square feet across the Twin Cities and 1.3 million square feet in metro Denver, according to Finance & Commerce.
A Colliers team including Mark Kolsrud, John McCarthy, Peter Carbonneau, Peter Loehrer, Kyle Delarosby and Lydia Paasch led negotiations on behalf of the seller.
Kolsrud, a Colliers senior executive vice president, said in prepared remarks that sourcing and selecting a buyer was a highly competitive process due to the high demand for industrial warehouses and distribution centers in the market. Kolsrud said the team and seller felt “very fortunate to have found a reliable and committed buyer in Nicola Wealth.”
Matthew Schaeffers, director of acquisitions at NWRE, said in a prepared statement that the acquisition presents an opportunity to add a diversified portfolio in a low vacancy environment that offers attractive risk-adjusted returns. Schaeffers said the assets provide immediate scale complementary to the firm’s overall cluster strategy in established and promising markets.
An active industrial buyer
Nicola Wealth Real Estate is the real estate team of Nicola Wealth, a Canadian financial planning and investment firm. NWRE continues to concentrate its growth in major U.S. markets such as Las Vegas, Phoenix, Seattle, Denver, San Francisco, and now Minneapolis with a focus on acquiring income-producing properties and executing development and value-add strategies.
In late August, NWRE acquired the Ampac Industrial Park I & II in the Las Vegas market. The property is comprised of seven small- to medium-bay modern industrial buildings totaling 175,818 square feet on 17 acres, including 4 acres of surplus land for future development.
In April, NWRE acquired two industrial properties in the Seattle market. The first acquisition was SODO Urbanworks, a 169,685-square-foot flex industrial space on nearly 7 acres adjacent to the Port of Seattle and minutes from downtown Seattle. The second acquisition, Par Mac 200, is a multi-tenant industrial property comprised of 26,048 square feet on 1.8 acres in Kirkland, Wash., a submarket recording strong industrial demand.
