Lehigh Valley Industrial Park Lands $111M in Financing

Park 100 Logistics Center. Image courtesy of JLL

With the assistance of JLL’s Capital Markets division, GLP Capital Partners and Ridgeline Property Group have secured $111 million in financing for Park 100 Logistics Center, a 1.5 million-square-foot industrial park in Allentown, Pa., in the Lehigh Valley. JLL orchestrated the loan through Wells Fargo Bank.

READ ALSO: How Will Coronavirus Impact US Commercial Real Estate Sector?

Located off I-78 at 7352 Industrial Blvd., Park 100 sits within a day’s drive of 40 percent of the U.S. The 92-acre site is the former home of a 1 million-square-foot Kraft Food processing plant and a handful of auxiliary buildings, all of which Ridgeline demolished to make way for the first phase of the industrial project. Park 100’s existing 730,000-square-foot distribution facility opened in 2018. Construction of the second phase of the rail-served property is currently underway and will yield an 811,200-square-foot production facility later in 2020.

The Wells Fargo financing for Park 100 came in the form of a three-year, floating-rate loan. “Lenders are actively pursuing industrial transactions in the Lehigh Valley given all the demand drivers,” Jon Mikula, senior managing director with JLL, told Commercial Property Executive. “We had strong interest for this particular deal due to the quality of the opportunity as well as the sponsorship.” JLL’s Bill Fishel and Connor Van Cleef, senior managing director and analyst, respectively, joined Mikula on the Capital Markets team that represented the borrowers.

Leasing here in Allentown

Park 100’s second phase should find a warm reception upon delivery, given the local industrial market’s strong fundamentals. According to a fourth quarter 2019 report by JLL, the Lehigh Valley recorded nearly 7 million square feet of positive net absorption in 2019 and closed the year with a vacancy rate of just 5.7 percent. “The demand for industrial product from investors, developers and users has shown no signs of slowing down as we enter 2020,” as noted in the report.