Ares Management Acquires 6 MSF Industrial Portfolio

1810 Fifth Ave. Image courtesy of Westmount Realty Capital

Dallas-based Westmount Realty Capital has teamed up with Ares Management Corp. to recapitalize and acquire a 51-property industrial portfolio totaling a combined 6.1 million square feet throughout the Greater Chicago area and the Milwaukee market. A joint venture between Partners Group and Westmount sold the portfolio encompassing logistics, bulk distribution and last-mile facilities. CBRE and Eastdil worked on behalf of the seller.

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The facilities have a combined 120-plus tenant base, where only 10 tenants lease nearly 2.6 million square feet of space. The portfolio, which was 98.8 percent leased at the time of the transaction, contains mostly multi-tenant industrial properties in infill locations.

The industrial landscape of Chicago

The bulk of the 51 assets are within the Chicago market, mainly concentrated around the O’Hare International Airport. At the end of 2021, the sought-after O’Hare Industrial submarket had a 1.8 percent vacancy rate, well below the 3.5 average for the metro, JLL data shows. Investor interest was elevated across the whole metro, with nearly 46 million square feet of positive net absorption for the industrial sector at the end of the year.

Westmount is an active investor within Greater Chicago. In 2019, the company in a joint venture with Stockbridge acquired a 38-property portfolio totaling 1.7 million square feet in several submarkets of the city, such as O’Hare, Lake County and Elgin. Last July, a 1 million-square-foot industrial complex in Joliet, Ill., dubbed Core5 Logistics Center traded for $94.3 million.

At the end of last year, Greater Chicago had 28.8 million square feet of industrial space under construction. Recently, a partnership between Venture One Real Estate and CRG broke ground on a build-to-suit development totaling 897,000 square feet in University Park, Ill. The building within the Gateway 57 Business Park is slated for an early 2023 delivery.