Amazon-Leased Queens Project Lands $316M Loan

Grand Logistics Center. Rendering courtesy of JLL

LBA Logistics and RXR Realty have received $316 million in construction financing for Grand Logistics Center, their 1.1-million-square-foot, multi-story distribution project in the Queens community of Maspeth, set to be delivered in December 2022. Public records show JP Morgan Chase originated the debt.

Located at 55-15 Grand Ave., the project is roughly 3 miles from the intersection of Brooklyn-Queens and Long Island expressways, which provides access to Manhattan and the outer borough markets. At the end of June, Amazon signed a full-building lease at the facility. Once completed, the four-story building will include 21-foot clear heights, two parking levels and 84 dock high doors.   

JLL Executive Managing Directors Kevin MacKenzie and Mike Tepedino, together with Managing Director Brian Torp arranged the financing, while Vice Chairman Robert Kossar and Executive Managing Director Leslie Lanne represented the landlord in the lease deal. At the beginning of September, a different JLL team arranged $105 million in construction financing for Bronx Logistics Center, a 1.2 million-square-foot logistics facility. 

New York City’s industrial moment

Despite severe disruption brought by the pandemic and ensuing economic fallout, the New York industrial market recorded positive net absorption in 2020 through the third quarter, at roughly 700,000 square feet, JLL research shows.

While several metros recorded negative absorption, most notably Los Angeles (-7.6 million square feet), industrial remained, at a national level, one of the strongest-performing asset classes. The sector is set to hit 200 million square feet of positive absorption in 2020, according to JLL data, with Dallas/Fort Worth, the Inland Empire, Columbus and Indianapolis as some of the most active U.S. markets. Even so, at 2.1 percent vacancy, New York remains the country’s tightest market.