Bridge Development to Sell $700M Industrial Portfolio to Duke

By Barbra Murray

Steve Poulos, founder & CEO of Bridge Development Partners

Bridge Development Partners LLC is in a selling state of mind, and its latest disposition deal will put $700 million in the company’s pocket. Bridge just signed an agreement to sell an industrial portfolio consisting of 3.4 million square feet of properties and two soon-to-be-developed land parcels to Duke Realty Corp.

Located in key infill industrial markets in Southern California, Northern New Jersey and South Florida, the portfolio includes 10 premier properties recently developed by Bridge and joint venture partner Banner Oak Capital Partners, in addition to two land parcels that will soon yield buildings totaling roughly 842,000 square feet. The existing facilities carry a price tag of $515 million, and the soon-to-be-developed sites add an extra $185 million to the sales figure.

“This portfolio sale is part of the $1.1 billion of new state-of-the-art industrial assets Bridge will sell in 2017,” Steve Poulos, founder & CEO of Bridge Development Partners, said in a prepared statement. The company’s long list of transactions this year also includes the $80 million sale of three Miami industrial properties totaling roughly 676,800 square feet to Duke, and the disposition of a 491,000-square-foot Chicago-area portfolio in a $69 million deal.

Investors hungry for a bigger slice of the industrial pie

It’s likely that Bridge won’t have too much trouble finding buyers for the remaining assets it plans to trade this year, as investors are more than a little keen on the industrial sector these days, thanks in no small part to e-commerce. Demand for industrial accommodations has been quite strong over the last five years as e-commerce moves the supply-chain focus toward “last mile” customer delivery, as noted in a mid-year 2017 survey by real estate investment services firm Marcus & Millichap. Among survey participants who already own a particular property type, industrial owners lead the pack of those who believe it is still a good time to acquire more assets, with 47 percent responding that the timing remains right for additional purchasing. And 64 percent of the industrial investors indicated they believe values in the sector will continue to rise, beating out the apartment sector, where only 58 percent of the owners remain confident that rising multifamily prices will endure.

Tony Pricco, President, Bridge Development Partners

Bridge expects to wrap up its latest portfolio sale with Duke in a series of phases, the last of which is scheduled to reach completion by year’s end. In the meantime, the developer keeps on developing. “Bridge has a pipeline of over $1.3 billion, which encompasses 10.3 million square feet in the most supply constrained U.S. core industrial markets of Chicago, Miami, New Jersey, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle,” Tony Pricco, president of Bridge Development Partners, said in prepared remarks.

Images courtesy of Bridge Development Partners