FLORENCE, KY. — The Kroger Co. plans to invest $17 million to expand its newly built distribution center on Mt. Zion Road in Florence, a city in northern Kentucky’s Boone County. The 674,000-square-foot facility, which opened in fall 2017 after Kroger’s $60 million investment, currently employs 80 associates. The expansion project will ramp up production at the facility and create 250 new jobs, the majority of which will be full-time positions. The project is supported by a Kentucky Business Investment incentive of up to $1 million over 10 years. The company’s annual eligibility for the performance-based tax credit is linked to investment, job creation and retention and average hourly wage targets. Kroger will start to expand its team for the distribution facility in September. The grocer currently employs more than 21,000 people in Kentucky.
PHOENIX — Prologis has selected Graycor Construction Co. for the first phase of its new Prologis I-17 Logistics Center, located on 25 acres of infill space within Phoenix’s 7th Street Corridor. When complete, the first phase will comprise four buildings offering a total of 558,712 square feet of industrial space, divisible from 25,000 square feet to 211,000 square feet. The project is located at 2111-2145 S. 7th St. at the southeast corner of 7th Street and Interstate 17. Graycor will begin construction of the first phase in July, with completion slated for the first quarter of 2019. Phase I will feature four buildings ranging in size from 82,284 square feet to 211,208 square feet. Each building will offer 32-foot clear heights, 52-foot by 50-foot column spacing, 135-foot to 210-foot truck courts and the flexibility to accommodate multiple mid-size users.
EDWARDSVILLE, ILL. —TriStar Properties is developing a $115 million industrial campus for World Wide Technology (WWT) at Gateway Commerce Center in Edwardsville, just northeast of St. Louis. The 176-acre build-to-suit will include two buildings totaling 2 million square feet. St. Louis-based WWT is an international technology provider with 4,600 employees in more than 70 offices worldwide. WWT plans to use one building for the production and assembly of technology equipment. The other will be used for storage and distribution. The buildings are slated for completion in April and August 2019. The buildings will feature a clear height of 36 feet in addition to dock doors and truck courts. Contegra Construction is the general contractor. PCCP is TriStar’s equity partner in the deal.
COLUMBUS, OHIO — Sealy & Co. has acquired a 478,190-square-foot industrial building in Columbus for an undisclosed price. The building is currently 53 percent occupied by a startup company known as Le Tote, which is a personalized clothing subscription company. The property, known as CenterPoint #6, is located within CenterPoint Business Park. The 4 million-square-foot industrial park is located near I-270. The seller was not disclosed.
FORT WAYNE, IND. — Cushman & Wakefield has negotiated a 282,550-square-foot, seven-year industrial lease renewal on behalf of Essex and Essex Brownell in Fort Wayne. The property is located at 3405 Meyer Road. Essex is a magnet wire product manufacturer while Essex Brownell is a North American distributor of a wide variety of industrial service and repair parts. The building will also continue to be a home for Essex Active, an industrial material conversion and fabrication service offered by Essex Brownell. Kirk Diamond, Greg Dickerson and Fritz Kauffman of Cushman & Wakefield represented Essex in the lease negotiation. Steve Zacher and John Adams of The Zacher Company represented the landlords, Indiana Acquisitions and Continental Hastings. The 862,450-square-foot warehouse is part of the Coastal Commerce Center. Both Essex and the landlord plan to invest capital to upgrade the space. Five other tenants also occupy space at the property.
Amarillo’s industrial market is truly a tale of two sectors, as some form of that expression goes, and the key number is 50,000 square feet. The occupancy rate for industrial properties in the sub-50,000-square-foot range in Amarillo remains very high, with few properties of this size sitting on the market for extended amounts of time. With such high occupancy rates, several new developments have recently sprung up. Those with both large footprints and divisible floor plans to meet the needs of smaller tenants tend to be most successful in terms of leasing velocity. In addition, developers of this product type are seeing its success and gravitating to Amarillo with spec projects. This sector of the industrial market should remain profitable for developers unless construction costs increase at a greater pace than rents can justify. The lull lies in existing properties that measure more than 50,000 square feet. In a smaller market like Amarillo, properties of this size sitting empty can be an ominous sign, and a few in particular have really come to symbolize concerns about sales of assets of this magnitude. Such properties include a 140,208-square-foot manufacturing facility previously occupied by chemicals manufacturer Techspray; a 115,000-square-foot facility formerly occupied …
Fantini & Gorga Secures $2.3M Acquisition Financing for Industrial Building in Central Massachusetts
AGAWAM, MASS. — Fantini & Gorga has secured $2.3 million in acquisition financing for an industrial building in Agawam. Jason Cunnane and Cas Groblewski of Fantini & Gorga arranged financing through a Massachusetts-based financial institution on behalf of the borrower, a group of investors. The property features 140,000 rentable square feet and is located on 21 acres of land. The seller was undisclosed.
FORT WORTH, TEXAS — Hillwood will build two industrial facilities totaling approximately 1.3 million square feet within the AllianceTexas mixed-use development in Fort Worth. Alliance Center North 3 will offer 782,000 square feet and Alliance Northport 1 will total 500,000 square feet. Both properties will feature cross-dock configurations, 36-foot clear heights, ample trailer parking and adjacent land for future parking expansions. Construction of both buildings is expected to begin in August and wrap up by March 2019.
RICHARDSON, TEXAS — Charlotte, N.C.-based Romans Properties LLC has arranged the sale of a 75,119-square-foot data center located at 1001 E. Campbell Road in Richardson, a northeastern suburb of Dallas. The sales price was approximately $36.6 million. The property is fully leased to Sungard AS, a Pennsylvania-based provider of recovery software for cloud computing and data systems. Chris Orr of Romans Properties represented the buyer, an institutional investor, in the transaction.
LEWIS CENTER, OHIO — Romans Properties has brokered the $5 million sale of a data center in Lewis Center, about 20 miles north of Columbus. The 57,000-square-foot facility is located at 8180 Green Meadows Drive. The property is fully leased by Cyxtera, which provides data center colocation, cybersecurity and cloud-based services. Chris Orr of Romans represented the buyer, an institutional client. The seller was not disclosed.