Intercontinental, Kennedy Wilson Buy CA Facility for $84M

Stockton Industrial Park. Image courtesy of Intercontinental Real Estate Corp.

A joint venture of Intercontinental Real Estate Corp. and Kennedy Wilson has acquired Stockton Industrial Park, an 877,648-square-foot manufacturing and distribution facility in Stockton, Calif., for $84 million.

The joint venture partners did not release the seller’s name, only identifying the entity as a New York-based owner and operator of logistics real estate. CommercialEdge reports the most recent owner of the property was Link Logistics, which acquired the asset in February 2017 for $32.5 million.

CBRE’s National Industrial Partners Team, led by Barbara Perrier, Darla Longo and Rebecca Perlmutter along with Blake Rasmussen and Tyler Vallenari of Cushman & Wakefield marketed the property for sale on behalf of the seller. CBRE represented the seller.

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This is the first investment for the Intercontinental/Kennedy Wilson joint venture. Kennedy Wilson, a Beverly Hills, Calif.,-based global real estate investment company, has approximately $23 billion in assets under management, including 11 million square feet of industrial space across the Western U.S. and Europe. In May, Kennedy Wilson acquired a diversified portfolio of 20 U.K. urban logistics assets totaling 1.3 million square feet in an off-market transaction from Leftfield for $287 million. Kennedy Wilson took a 20 percent ownership in the portfolio and invested $24 million of equity in that transaction.

The Stockton Industrial Park transaction is the 35th industrial acquisition for Intercontinental, bringing the Boston-based private equity real estate firm’s holdings to more than 11 million square feet of industrial space. In March 2021, the firm closed on its first industrial acquisition in Los Angeles County—a last-mile distribution center fully leased to Amazon that traded for $74 million.

Gary Palmer, president of commercial investments at Kennedy Wilson, said in a prepared statement the asset’s great location and strategic upside, combined with the sector’s macro trends such as robust e-commerce growth, made Stockton Industrial Park a lead-off homerun for the new joint venture.

Allen Logue, director, acquisitions at Intercontinental, stated the property has rents 21 percent below market rate and is positioned very well to benefit from all the major drivers of the burgeoning sector, including consumer demand in the most populous U.S. state.

Property details

The property, completed in 1975, is located at 1604 Tillie Lewis Drive within the Central Valley industrial submarket in San Joaquin County. Situated on nearly 40 acres off State Route 4, the facility is 5 minutes from I-5 and the Port of Stockton. It also located near several major railways, including Stockton Terminal & Eastern Railroad, UP Intermodal and BNSF Intermodal, as well as Stockton Metropolitan Airport. Stockton has direct truck access, both north and south, via I-5 and State Highway 99 and east-west via I-205, I-580 and I-80, which allows service throughout California, Nevada and other western states.

It has three highly functional and easily divisible buildings featuring 24-foot to 28-foot clear heights, ample dock-high and grade-level loading and a wide range of unit sizes for warehouse and/or manufacturing purposes. The largest building is 570,000 square feet and offers direct rail service.

Stockton Industrial Park was 100 percent leased at closing with a weighted average lease term of approximately 2.5 years and rents 27 percent below market rates, providing significant upside in rental growth. There at least four tenants, according to CommercialEdge data. Industrial supply in Stockton remains tight, with only 5 percent vacancy.

Jessica Levin, senior director, acquisitions at Intercontinental, who led the purchase, noted the Central Valley’s tight market was second nationally in industrial rent growth. She said in prepared remarks the combination of the continued expansion of e-commerce with a push toward better positioning and performance in the supply chain provided a good opportunity to acquire a high-quality, well-located industrial and logistics property primed to further capitalize on those trends.