TA Realty LLC recently sold two class A warehouse buildings to High Street Logistics Properties, LLC. The transaction between the two Boston-based companies totaled over $60 million and encompassed 440,850 square feet.

The first building, consisting of 189,600 square feet, is located at 525 Industrial Drive in Lewisberry, Pennsylvania and fully leased to Westlake Pipe. The second building, located at 701 Stony Battery Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, is leased to Packaging Corporation of America and includes 251,250 square feet.

The seller was represented by the Capital Markets team from BRK Real Estate Advisors consisting of Bob Yoshimura, Joe Hill and Eric Mattson. “Our marketing efforts attracted many qualified investors which lead to a very competitive process,” said Mattison.  “The buyer was attracted to the assets due their quality, location, and ability to increase rental rates when the current leases expire.” 

BRK Real Estate Advisors is located in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania and specializes in capital market transactions, including pension fund advisors, REIT’s and family offices, as well as private ownership groups.

Industrial Realty Group (IRG) announced that Amazon has fully leased a 225,882-square-foot building at 33815 Weyerhaeuser Way S. at Woodbridge Corporate Park in Federal Way. The deal marks a major milestone in IRG’s revitalization of the former Weyerhaeuser campus, which includes ground-up development, significant job and tax revenue creation, and preservation of the campus’s surrounding natural elements.

“We are absolutely thrilled to welcome Amazon to Woodbridge Corporate Park and the greater Federal Way community,” said Coby Holley, vice president and asset development manager at IRG, which purchased the property in 2016. “Amazon will play a significant role in transforming this incredible property into a vibrant, multi-tenant campus,” he added.

The Amazon lease represents one of two new buildings that IRG recently completed at the Woodbridge campus. Together, they total about 440,000 square feet of Class A state-of-the-art industrial space. IRG’s two already developed buildings and the separate proposed Business Park project will create more than 3,100 permanent jobs and generate $6.8 million in annual tax revenue for the City of Federal Way.

KKR has acquired a two-building Class A logistics property in the Nashville Airport submarket. KKR paid $76.2 million for the industrial campus, or $186 a square foot. The firm financed the purchase with a $42 million loan from Forethought. The seller was a joint venture between LRC Properties and Machine Investment Group.

The two-building logistics property is located adjacent to Nashville International Airport, with direct access to downtown Nashville and immediate proximity to the I-24, I-40, and I-65 major interstate trucking highways. The second of the two multi-tenant industrial buildings was completed in 2023. The property features 30-foot and 32-foot clear heights with cross-dock and rear-loading, excess power, and excellent access and site circulation. The property features Amazon as a tenant. 

“Nashville is continuing to experience outsized growth driven by favorable long-term demographic trends. We are pleased to add this high-quality asset to our portfolio, particularly given its airport adjacent location,” said KKR’s Ben Brudney.

Essex Realty Group, Inc., has negotiated the sales of five apartment buildings in two separate transactions. One sale was a four-building, 50-unit portfolio located at 6153 S May, 6348 S. Racine, 6459 S. Racine, and 6934 S. Princeton — all in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood.

The other transaction was located in South Shore at 7106 S. Euclid, a 13-unit mixed-use property with nine apartment units and four commercial spaces. The Essex listing team of Robert Berman, Michael Anguiano, Daniel Shabsin, Jeremy DeMarco, and Joe Kalhammer facilitated both transactions on behalf of the private sellers.

“As interest rates stabilize, we’re seeing a lot of pent-up demand return to the market from both local and out-of-state investors,” said Berman. Essex Realty Group, Inc. specializes in the sale of investment real estate throughout the Chicago metropolitan area.

Join the leaders and dealmakers when they explore the most important topics and trends at Connect Midwest: Multifamily, Affordable, Student & Senior Housing Trends on June 4, 2024, at the W-Chicago, City Center Hotel, Chicago, IL. Register to attend to network with the best in the industry and sit in on discussions you won’t hear anywhere else. Early Bird Registration Ends April 19. 

The Urban Land Institute Chicago (ULI) has released a new report that calls on the city to take bold measures to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions from buildings.

ULI Chicago brought together 50 area stakeholders, including industry experts, civic and community leaders, and public sector officials, to develop recommendations for accelerating building decarbonization. The findings suggest that the city should set limits on emissions from certain buildings, similar to an approach used in New York.

According to the report, 69 percent of carbon emissions in the city come from buildings. ULI indicated that while leadership from the public sector is key, close partnerships with the nonprofit and private sectors will be necessary to implement the report recommendations effectively.

Join the leaders and dealmakers when they explore the most important topics and trends at Connect Midwest: Multifamily, Affordable, Student & Student Housing Trends on June 4, 2024, at the W-Chicago, City Center Hotel, Chicago, IL. Register to attend to network with the best in the industry and sit in on discussions you won’t hear anywhere else. Early Bird Registration Ends April 19. 

Bisnow/Jon Banister

WashREIT’s office building at 1775 Eye St. NW

The picture of how much commodity office buildings in D.C. are selling for post-pandemic is getting clearer now that the prices Brookfield Asset Management paid for a chunk of WashREIT’s office portfolio have become public.

The D.C.-based REIT announced last week it closed on the 12-building, $766M portfolio sale, which was the culmination of a major restructuring effort, and documents were posted Tuesday in the D.C. Recorder of Deeds showing the individual sale prices for five D.C. office buildings. 

• The office building at 1775 Eye St. NW sold for $80.5M, deed records show. The building, constructed in 1964, is 87% occupied and totals 188K SF, according to WashREIT’s Q2 earnings supplement, meaning the sale came out to $428/SF. 
• The Army-Navy Building at 1627 Eye St. NW sold for $64M, deed records show. According to WashREIT’s Q2 earnings, the building was 97% leased and totals 108K SF, putting the deal at $593/SF. 
• The 1901 Pennsylvania Ave. NW office building sold for $40.3M, deed records show. It was 81% leased as of Q2 and totals 101K SF, putting the deal at $399/SF. 
• The 1140 Connecticut Ave. NW office building sold for $38.8M, deed records show. It was 82% leased as of Q2 and totals 184K SF, putting the sale at $211/SF. 
• The building at 1220 19th St. NW sold for $24.25M, deed records show. Built in 1976, it was 85% occupied as of Q2 and totaled 103K SF, putting the deal at $235/SF. 

The sixth D.C. building sale it announced it was selling to Brookfield, 2000 M St. NW, appears to be owned under a ground-lease structure and the latest sale wasn’t recorded Tuesday. The six other office buildings in the 12-property portfolio were in Northern Virginia, with three in Arlington, two in Alexandria and one in Tysons. 

WashREIT still owns one office building, 600 Watergate, which it said in June it plans to sell separately “when practicable.” WashREIT CEO Paul McDermott said on the firm’s Q2 earnings call last week it expects to hold onto the property at least for the rest of this year, calling it the “best office asset that we had owned,” according to a Motley Fool transcript. 

The REIT also said in June it had signed a letter of intent to sell its eight remaining retail assets, as it shifts to becoming a multifamily-only REIT. WashREIT also said it plans to expand its multifamily portfolio to new Southeast markets including Atlanta, Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham, and it plans to focus on middle-income renters. 

On the earnings call, McDermott said WashREIT sees strong growth drivers in the multifamily sector, a stark contrast to what it was seeing in the office market. 

“In office, we were facing challenging and increasing headwinds, including increase in capital requirements, and we expect those headwinds to continue,” McDermott said. “This contrast in growth prospects boosts our confidence that will create more values for our investors going forward through our portfolio recalibration.”

The company said in June that it aims to transfer the majority of its office personnel to Brookfield, and on the earnings call McDermott said he is grateful to the departing staff and will miss them. 

“I’ll be blunt, it’s been an emotional week here, saying goodbye to colleagues that we’ve had the privilege to work with as we work up to this transformation,” McDermott said, according to the transcript. “But what that has left us with is an outstanding multifamily team to build a platform off of.”