Link Logistics Pays $82M for Suburban Business Park

Plymouth Ponds Business Park

In an $82.3 million deal, Link Logistics purchased Plymouth Ponds Business Park, an eight-building, multi-tenant light industrial park in the Minneapolis suburb of Plymouth, Minn. JLL Capital Markets advised and represented Link in the off-market transaction. The seller was United Properties.

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The 60-acre park, built from 1997 to 2001, is at 17100 Medina Road, at the intersection of Highway 55 and County Road, providing quick access to I-394 and I-494. The location is about 13 miles west of downtown Minneapolis and 25 miles from the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport.

Plymouth Ponds is a master-planned business park consisting of seven 24-foot clear buildings totaling 715,000 square feet and one 18-foot clear 83,000-square-foot showroom building, according to CommercialEdge. The park is 95 percent occupied overall.

The JLL Capital Markets team that represented Blackstone affiliate Link was led by Senior Managing Directors Colin Ryan and David Berglund.

“This is another example of the strength of infill industrial,” Ryan said in a prepared statement, adding that Plymouth Ponds sold at “a price well below replacement cost” and that the firm continues to see “more and more capital chase secondary markets like Minneapolis-St. Paul because of the higher yields when compared to the smile states.”

The definition of “smile states” varies, but generally it refers to the Sun Belt as a whole, the region from the Southeast to Phoenix, or a coast-to-coast swath across the South.

JLL was unable to provide requested additional information by deadline, and Link did not respond to Commercial Property Executive’s request for additional information. The seller was not disclosed.

Accelerating development

Both build-to-suit and speculative development in Minneapolis’ industrial sector ramped up during the first quarter, according to a recent report from Cushman & Wakefield. A bit more than 1.8 million square feet was underway in the first quarter, with a further nearly 2.0 million square feet slated to break ground and hit completion by the end of this year.

The Northwest submarket is the strongest in the Minneapolis metro. The submarket has an overall vacancy of 4.7 percent on an inventory of 78.9 million square feet. The weighted average net rent for warehouse/distribution space is $4.87 per square foot, also according to Cushman & Wakefield.

In January, Link made a notable acquisition, buying the brand-new Hargrove Industrial Campus in Lanham, Md., just east of Washington, D.C. The 400,455-square-foot asset sold for $135 million; the seller was CGMG Development.