Fairstead closed on a $20M investment to acquire and rehabilitate Sunflower Terrace Apartments at 5050 Sunflower St. in Houston’s southern Sunnyside neighborhood. 

Sunflower Terrace Apartments

Fairstead will work with R4 Capital, its mortgage lending affiliate R4 Capital Funding and the Houston Housing Finance Corp. The project will be reserved for low- and very low-income families.

The property consists of 160 affordable housing units under a project-based Section 8 contract. Rents will be capped at 50% of the area median income for half of the units and 60% of AMI for the remaining units.

Fairstead, a national affordable housing real estate company, will own the property with HHFC. Fairstead will also serve as developer and property manager.

The complex was originally built in 1971. Renovations will begin this summer and are slated for completion in August 2026. 

SALES

Houston-based real estate investment and development firm Griffin Partners acquired a 39K SF, two-building industrial park at 4901 Milwee St. in Northwest Houston. Colliers’ Todd Moore, Connor Duffy and Zack Martin represented the seller, Wolf Capital Partners. The park is 91% leased. 

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Colliers’ Tom Condon Jr., Greg Cizik and Edward Edson represented the seller of a 53K SF light industrial building at 9201 Winkler Drive near Hobby Airport. The buyer was a private investment group represented by Zane Carman of Partners Real Estate. Closing was coordinated by Charlotte Sanders and her team at Alamo Title Houston.

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Partners Real Estate’s Wyatt Huff and Hunter Stockard represented Harbor Hill Holdings in the sale of a 25K SF manufacturing facility on 7 acres at 1302 S. Cherry St. in Tomball. The property was acquired by a local private investor. 

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Ameritex Machine & Fabrication purchased a 145K SF property at 915 Conroe Park West Drive. Garret Geaccone with Stream Realty Partners represented the seller, TradeLane Properties. Tim ONeill with TSO Properties represented the buyer.

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Courtesy of Apricus Realty Capital

An 11-acre industrial outdoor storage site at 6003 Cunningham Road in Northwest Houston.

Apricus Realty Capital acquired an 11-acre industrial outdoor storage property with 32K SF of warehouse and office space across multiple buildings. The property in Northwest Houston, near Highway 290 and Beltway 8, is fully leased to Knight Oil Tools.

JLL Capital Markets worked on behalf of Apricus Realty Capital to secure acquisition financing, a three-year, fixed-rate, interest-only loan with one 24-month extension option.

CW Sheehan, Jack Britton, Peyton Ackerman and Nate Henderson led the JLL debt advisory team.

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Shawn Ackerman of Henry S. Miller Brokerage represented the seller of the 197K SF Woodforest Shopping Center in East Houston. Ackerman grew occupancy at the property from 37% to 96% over several years and sold it to a local buyer in a direct deal. 

LEASES

World Emblem, a Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based emblem and patch manufacturer, signed a 72K SF lease for a manufacturing facility at 6740 Signat Drive. The company is moving its regional operations from 35K SF in Northwest Houston into the larger space, which will initially produce up to 500,000 emblems and patches per week.

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Stream Realty Partners announced the following leases: 

• Marquis Distributors LLC expanded to a total of 23K SF at 525 Julie Rivers Drive in Sugar Land. Will Mason and Tyler Maner with Stream Realty Partners represented the tenant, and Boone Smith, Garret Geaccone and Natalie Gilbert, also with Stream, represented the landlord, Oxford Properties. 
• Vasa Tech North America LLC leased 35K SF at 8700 Clay Road. Jack Rathe and Brandon Preece with Stream Realty Partners represented the landlord, Entrada Partners. Jackie Chang with Forever Realty represented the tenant.

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Tri Pointe Homes renewed its 24K SF lease at Atrium at Park Ten, a 140K SF West Houston office building owned by Accesso. The homebuilder plans to upgrade its finishes and reconfigure its office layout over its new lease term.

CONSTRUCTION AND DEVELOPMENT

Griffin Partners Income & Value Fund IV and Peakline Real Estate Funds are expanding the Griffin 288/West Airport industrial project in Houston to three buildings with a combined 569K SF across 41 acres, CBRE announced. 

Griffin Partners and Peakline originally acquired about 18 acres in December and announced plans for a 225K SF industrial building. They acquired 23 more acres in May and announced plans for two more buildings. They have now combined those plans into a single phase with construction slated to begin this month.

CBRE’s Faron Wiley and Billy Gold will handle leasing efforts. Delivery is expected between April and June. 

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Chicago-based RSK Real Estate Partners has begun developing a 156-duplex build-to-rent community near the Market at Katy Park in Harris County. The to-be-named project will front the under-construction Galileo Way, which will create access to Morton Road in Northwest Katy.

RSK’s project will include 103 three-bedroom units and 53 two-bedroom designs, averaging 1,600 SF. The developer anticipates the buildings will start to deliver in the late second quarter of 2026.

NewQuest’s Rick Ragan and Glenn Dickerson represented RSK Real Estate Partners in the acquisition of the 9-acre development site. Matthew Davis and Kristen McDade of Cushman & Wakefield represented Morton Ranch Development LLC, the seller and developer of the Market at Katy Park, a 158K SF H-E-B-anchored retail center. 

FINANCING

Courtesy of Newmark

Layne Crossing

Crow Holdings completed a recapitalization of a 6M SF industrial portfolio that included seven buildings totaling nearly 900K SF in the Houston area. Blackstone Real Estate acquired a 95% stake in the portfolio, which also includes 18 other buildings in Dallas-Fort Worth and Chicago.

The properties in Houston include Layne Crossing, with six buildings totaling 529K SF in Houston, and Victory Commerce Center, with one 349K SF building in Deer Park. 

Newmark’s Dom Espinosa, Jack Fraker, Dustin Volz and Kevin Donner advised Crow Holdings in the transaction, while the company’s Adam Spies, Marcella Fasulo and Josh King supported negotiations. Fried Frank was legal counsel for Crow Holdings.

Large-scale loans helped drive significant credit changes in newly delinquent loans, cured loans and modified loans during July, Trepp reported. For example, the office CMBS delinquency rate rose 54 basis points last month to 8.09%, with a single loan–the $670-million securitization on 230 Park Ave. in Midtown Manhattan–representing about one-third of new delinquencies in the sector.

In the multifamily sector, several large loans also became delinquent or reverted to delinquency during July, according to Trepp. One of these was the $221-million MFP portfolio, which became nonperforming last November, returned to performing status in April and then flipped back last month. Multifamily delinquencies rose 27 bps to 2.63% as July ended.

Conversely, the $124.2-million Gansevoort Park Avenue loan backed by a Manhattan lodging property was sent to the special servicer in June for imminent monetary default but then turned back to performing matured balloon in July, taking the loan out of the pool of delinquent CMBS deals. This helped drive a 15-bp decrease in hotel delinquencies to 6.17%. Retail delinquencies also declined in July, dropping by 28 bps to 6.14%.

Ashley Capital started construction on a new speculative 397K SF industrial building at 11101 Enterprise Way in Sturtevant, Wisconsin. This will be the third building constructed at the firm’s Enterprise Business Park, and it’s just one of the many spec projects recently launched in Southeast Wisconsin as developers take advantage of the growing demand for space from e-commerce, food and logistics companies looking to serve both the Chicago and Milwaukee metro areas.

Courtesy of Ashley Capital

11101 Enterprise Way in Sturtevant, Wisconsin.

“Several years ago, we acquired 90 acres of farmland along I-94 between Chicago and Milwaukee,” Ashley Capital Vice President Gary Rosecrans said. “The first building we constructed is a 376K SF speculative distribution building. The second building we built is a 438K SF speculative distribution building. It is finished and occupied by Amazon. This was a catalytic project that resulted in the construction of our next speculative warehouse building, which will be completed in December 2020 and is now available for pre-leasing.” 

Enterprise Business Park will have more than 1.3M SF of Class-A industrial space when fully developed, Rosecrans added. The new building will bring Ashley’s industrial property portfolio in Racine County to more than 1.9M SF.

Transaction velocity has been picking up in the submarket, which includes Racine and Kenosha counties.

“Net absorption between January and March totaled 1.3M SF, the greatest quarterly tally in Southeast Wisconsin since the second quarter of 2015,” according to Colliers International.

During the previous seven quarters, developers finished 12 speculative construction projects totaling 3.4M SF, and by the first quarter, those buildings were 62.4% occupied, Colliers added.

John Sharpe and Tom Boyle of Lee & Associates and Terry McMahon and Cody Ziegler of Cushman & Wakefield | Boerke are marketing agents for Ashley’s newest project.

“The local submarket has a large number of industrial space users that continue to do well notwithstanding the current economic environment,” Boyle said. “It is also a magnet for companies in Chicago, Milwaukee and outside the region.”

EXECS

Commercial real estate veterans Rick Goldman and Justin Pathmann launched REthink Owner Solutions, a development and construction management advisory firm. The Highland Park, Illinois-based REthink already has a roster of projects, including a new senior housing project in Mount Prospect that is scheduled to break ground and the renovation of the Highland Park Public Library. Goldman for the last 19 years was an owner of Pacific Construction Services. Pathmann has more than 20 years of construction management experience, and in 2017 his former firm, Pathmann Construction Management, merged with Pacific Construction Services.

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Ryan Cos. US Inc. promoted Robert Wehner to vice president of pre-construction in its Chicago office. Wehner, who joined Ryan Cos. in 2004, will now lead pre-construction for the company’s Great Lakes region, which includes Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Indiana.

SALES

An affiliate of New York City-based investment firm KKR bought Amazon’s 1.5M SF fulfillment center in Kenosha, Wisconsin, for $176M, a new record for an industrial property in the Chicago region, according to a report in the Milwaukee Business Journal. The two-building complex, along with another property in the Charlotte, North Carolina, region, was part of a $260M portfolio deal, according to a press release from KKR. KTR Capital Partners developed the Kenosha buildings in 2013 and 2014 and was acquired by Prologis in 2015. Amazon will keep expanding its Southeast Wisconsin footprint in 2020, including with a 2.5M SF fulfillment center in Oak Creek that will open later this year.

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Courtesy of NAI Hiffman

5115 South Millard Ave.

Chicago-based Karis Cold Storage paid $7.5M for 5115 South Millard Ave., a 42K SF modern freezer building in Chicago’s Brighton Park neighborhood. John Basile of NAI Hiffman represented Karis in the transaction and completed a six-year lease with the sole tenant, Moesle Meat Co., a meat wholesaler. Karis is a newly launched private investment and development company, and this is its first investment in the cold storage sector.

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A private investor paid almost $2.5M for Super 8 Pleasant Prairie, a 60-room hotel at 7601 118th Ave. in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin. Ebrahim Valliani, John Yurich, Allan Miller and Chris Gomes of Marcus & Millichap’s Chicago Oak Brook, Austin and Dallas offices marketed the property for the seller, also a private investor. The Marcus & Millichap team also secured and represented the buyer.

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A partnership between Venture One Real Estate and Kovitz Investment Group closed on the acquisition of a 100K SF industrial building at 111 Washington Blvd. in suburban Mundelein. The single-tenant building, constructed in 1973, was 100% leased at acquisition. Cushman & Wakefield’s Marc Samuels represented the seller.

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A private investment group closed on the off-market acquisition of a 23K SF, single-tenant industrial property at 320-350 Industrial Drive in South Elgin. Entre Commercial Realty’s Cory Kay and Mike DeSerto represented the buyer. NAI Hiffman’s Bruce Granger represented the sellers.

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Monument Capital purchased the 192-unit Bartlett Lake Apartments for about $17.8M. Essex Realty Group brokered the sale; it was hired by the court-appointed receiver of Northridge Holdings Ltd. to sell the property after Addison, Illinois-based Northridge, along with several other entities, were accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission of being involved in a Ponzi scheme that included Bartlett Lakes Apartments. Essex’s Doug Imber, Kate Varde, Clay Maxfield and Jaimie Steinher represented the receiver, and their colleagues Brian Kochendorfer and Brian Karmowski represented Monument Capital.

Courtesy of DeKalb Economic Development Corp.

Facebook’s plan for ChicagoWest Business Center.

CONSTRUCTION AND DEVELOPMENT

Facebook officials said last Tuesday they will build an $800M data center on 505 acres of Krusinski Construction Co.’s ChicagoWest Business Center in DeKalb, Illinois, about 58 miles west of Chicago. Krusinski will provide the utility infrastructure and roadwork improvements necessary. Facebook will be able to take advantage of a new state tax incentive program exempting new data centers from sales taxes on the wide array of equipment each needs to regularly replace.

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Principle Construction Corp. remodeled and added onto a 408K SF industrial building at 6600 River Road in suburban Hodgkins. Building owner Midwest Industrial Funds hired Principle to remove one side of the existing building and install a new precast panel skin. The Principle team also added an 86K SF truck dock and a 50-car parking lot. Principle’s Mark Augustyn served as principal on the project, with Darrin Dehmlow as senior project manager and Mark Frane as superintendent. Harris Architects designed the remodel and addition.

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Bridge Development Partners partnered with Cabot Properties to acquire 1307 North Lombard Road in west suburban Lombard and develop it into Bridge Point I-355, a 133K SF industrial facility. The partners bought the vacant 7.25-acre site from Location Finders International. Bridge Point I-355 will feature 32-foot clear heights and parking for 170 cars and is scheduled to deliver in Q4. The seller was represented by JLL’s Dominic Carbonari, Frank Griffin and Kate Coxworth.       

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Courtesy of Evergreen Real Estate Group

Garden House of Maywood

Chicago-based Evergreen Real Estate Group completed its $7M renovation of Garden House of Maywood, a 144-unit affordable senior rental community in Maywood, a western suburb of Chicago. Housing and Human Development Corp., a nonprofit organization formed to develop and acquire affordable housing for low-income seniors and families, owns the 10-story building at 515 South 2nd Ave. Evergreen has managed the community since 2017, the year before HHDC acquired it with tax credits that also helped fund the capital improvements.

THIS AND THAT

Comcast will build the network infrastructure for Veridian, a 225-acre mixed-use campus under development in northwest suburban Schaumburg. Veridian will include residential and office space, hotel, entertainment, dining and urban-style street retail districts. Comcast will offer internet speeds of up to 100 gigabits per second to businesses located in the development, company officials said.