Sealy & Co.’s First Detroit-Area Acquisition

4400 Matthew Drive. Image courtesy of Sealy & Co.

Sealy & Co. has acquired a 407,500-square-foot distribution warehouse at 4400 Matthew Drive in Flint, Mich., for an undisclosed amount. The seller was Schostak Brothers.

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The 21-acre site is in Linden Creek Commerce Park, which is adjacent to Flint’s Bishop International Airport and close to the intersection of I-69 and I-75.

The property is fully leased to General Motors as a long-time tenant, which apparently uses the building as part of its truck manufacturing operations.

In a prepared statement, Sealy noted that the building is of a size that’s rare in this market and that it “far exceeds the typical product size of 180,000 square feet.”

The acquisition, Sealy’s first in the Detroit market, means that the company has expanded its holdings into 18 target markets across the U.S.

The transaction was facilitated by Sealy’s Investment Services team and JLL brokers Ed Halaburt and Sean Devaney.

In the statement, Sealy & Co. Chief Investment Officer Scott Sealy Jr. noted that 2021 marks the company’s 75th anniversary and that Sealy & Co. has now focused specifically on industrial investments for more than 60 years.

Recovering substantially

So far this year, the metro Detroit industrial market’s overall vacancy has increased to 4.9 percent, driven largely by new speculative construction, according to a first-quarter report from Newmark. Still, nearly half of the newly delivered product is already occupied, and much of the rest has leases pending.

The metro area’s unemployment is gradually falling from its high of 24 percent last May, to 5.4 percent in January. That’s in comparison to 4.3 percent before the pandemic’s onset, again according to Newmark.

Pandemic notwithstanding, Sealy has been a steady and significant purchaser of industrial assets across the country, having acquired a 1.2-million-square-foot industrial portfolio in Greenville, S.C., from Blackstone last August; a 1 million-square-foot distribution facility in the Metro East market of St. Louis in December; and most recently a 663,800-square-foot distribution warehouse in Houston.