Barings Buys $42M Phoenix Industrial Campus

Warner Commerce Center. Image courtesy of The Opus Group

Less than one year after breaking ground on the development of Warner Commerce Center in Tempe, Ariz., The Opus Group has sold the new 197,000-square-foot speculative industrial property, with the assistance of Cushman & Wakefield. Global investment management firm Barings purchased the asset in a transaction valued at $42.4 million.

Situated on an 18-acre infill property that Opus acquired from Honeywell International for $9.3 million in an off-market deal in December 2021, Warner Commerce is the product of a conversion project. The site had been home to a Honeywell office building before a demolition undertaking cleared the way for Opus to develop two industrial facilities totaling 98,500 square feet each.

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Carrying the addresses of 1320 and 1330 W. Warner Road, the two buildings feature 32-foot clear heights, as well as a total of 40 rear-load dock doors and four drive-in doors. The project was an Opus endeavor from top to bottom, with the company’s subsidiaries, Opus Development Co. LLC, Opus Design Build LLC and Opus AE Group LLC having spearheaded the construction, design and architectural responsibilities, respectively. The firm delivered the repurposed property in December 2022, well in advance of the original estimated completion date of March 2023.

Investor catnip

A Cushman & Wakefield Industrial Advisory Group team—Will Strong, Phil Haenel, Kirk Kuller, Molly Hunt, Cal Conway and Stephanie Saccente—represented Opus in the sale of Warner Commerce, which likely attracted a notable amount of attention from the investment community given the market’s robust fundamentals.

“Investors and developers continue to be highly confident in the Phoenix market, as the competitive advantage and growth drivers are stronger than ever,” according to a fourth quarter 2022 report by Kidder Mathews. Industrial sales prices reached a record high in the final quarter of the year, jumping to an average of $171 per square foot. Warner Commerce fetched approximately $215 per square foot.

Notable industrial sales transactions in The Valley in the last months of 2022 included Westcore Properties’ $93.5 million acquisition of the Central Logistics Center, a 1.1 million-square-foot asset in Phoenix. And, in perhaps the priciest deal of the fourth quarter, ArcBest Corp. shelled out $37.5 million, or roughly $735 per square foot, on the purchase of the 51,000-square-foot FedEx distribution center, also in Phoenix.