CBRE Fund Buys Industrial Portfolio for $111M

1323 Brewster Creek Blvd. Image courtesy of NAI Hiffman

A discretionary fund managed by CBRE Global Investors has purchased an industrial portfolio comprising two buildings in Bartlett, Ill., a Chicago suburb, and one in Phoenix. NAI Hiffman represented the sellers, the GSI Family Office and Greco/DeRosa Investment Group.

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The deal’s financials were not disclosed but based on transfer documents obtained by Commercial Property Executive, the total dollar value was $111.5 million: $47 million and $23.4 million for the Bartlett properties and $41.1 million for the Phoenix property.

1550 Hecht Drive. Image courtesy of NAI Hiffman

The larger of the Bartlett assets is a 421,354-square-foot building with 48 docks, 32-foot clear heights and 800 parking spaces, at 1323 Brewster Creek Blvd. Built in 2017, the property in Brewster Creek Business Park, which encompasses more than 1 million square feet occupied by food-related companies. Built in 2006, the nearby 1550 Hecht Drive is a 209,628-square-foot warehouse with offices and a cold storage component. Completed in 2006, the building serves as the headquarters for Greco Foods. The Bartlett properties are accessible to I-90, I-290 and I-355 and are about 25 miles from O’Hare International Airport.

The building in Phoenix is a 368,478-square-foot multi-tenant warehouse, one unit of which has a freezer/cooler component. The development was completed in 2017 and is sited at 4450 N. 45th Ave., near I-17 and I-10 and about 12 miles from Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

Overall, the portfolio reportedly was fully stabilized at the time of sale, with a weighted average remaining lease term of about eight years.

4450 N. 45th Ave. Image courtesy of NAI Hiffman

The NAI Hiffman Industrial Capital Markets personnel who represented GSI and Greco/DeRosa included Pat Sullivan, executive vice president; Ryan Chambers, vice president; and Jeff Fischer, executive vice president. JLL’s Tony Lydon, national director, and John Lydon, vice president, assisted in the sale of the Phoenix property.

The origins of Brewster Creek Business Park go back to 1999, when the Village of Bartlett created a tax increment financing district to help redevelop a former gravel quarry. In addition to the two just-sold properties, additional construction has continued there. Transwestern’s industrial development team broke ground on a 186,000-square-foot facility there in 2017 and sold the building to Barings Real Estate Advisers soon after it was completed.

Cold is staying hot

At a national level, there is great demand for core industrial properties, especially with a cold storage component, according to NAI Hiffman’s Pat Sullivan. The limited availability of stabilized, core warehouse product in the Chicago area and Phoenix, as well as the cold storage component of the portfolio, attracted significant interest, Sullivan added in prepared remarks.

The Chicago area’s cold storage market totals more than 11 million square feet and had just a 2.5 percent vacancy rate in the second quarter, according to NAI Hiffman analysis of CoStar data.