WP Carey Bought Six Deals for $282 million Including Cabela’s

A New York City-based real estate investment trust went fishing for big buys to close out last year and landed the largest store for outdoor, hunting and fishing retailer Cabela’s along with a distribution center filled by power tools maker Stanley Black & Decker.

Those were among six deals totaling $282 million that W.P. Carey closed in the final three months of 2019 to finish the year with more than $540 million spent on properties in the United States and Europe.

"The end of the year is often our most active period given our track record of timely execution and our ability to work with a range of tenants across diverse properties, geographies and industries," Gino Sabatini, W.P. Carey’s head of investments, said in a statement.

The REIT specializes in buying buildings occupied by a single tenant that has net leases, which means the landlord has little to no operating expense on a property. It owns more than 1,200 properties in the United States and Europe, one of which is the headquarters building occupied by the New York Times.

W.P. Carey paid $55.2 million for the Cabela’s in Hamburg, Pennsylvania, north of Reading off Interstate 78, according to property records.

The REIT tends to use cleverly named entities when it buys property. In a deal last year, W.P. Carey created You Scream LLC when it bought the plant and headquarters of ice cream and beverage maker Turkey Hill Dairy in Conestoga, Pennsylvania.

With the Cabela’s property, the REIT bought it through an entity named Gone Fishing (PA) LLC from a joint venture between San Francisco-based Sansome Pacific and New York City-based Fortress Investment Group.

Sansome and Fortress bought the store last May along with 10 other Cabela’s properties from the retailer’s Springfield, Missouri-based parent company in a $324.3 million deal. Cabela's is owned by Bass Pro Shops, which bought its competitor in 2017 for $4 billion. Bass Pro sold the properties and leased them back.

Cabela’s lists the store at 250,000 square feet, more than twice the size of a typical location, and considered the largest among its 85 locations. It was built in 2003 with economic incentives to be a tourist destination for the local area. It was the only retail property the REIT bought in the fourth quarter.

W.P. Carey’s biggest deal in the fourth quarter involved paying Towson, Maryland-based Stanley Black & Decker, a power tools company, just shy of $94 million for its 1.2 million-square-foot distribution center in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Fort Mill, South Carolina. The sale leaseback was done through an entity named Nailed It Multi LP.

The state line between North Carolina and South Carolina runs through the building. W.P. Carey paid $56.4 million for the Fort Mill side of the building and $37.4 million for the Charlotte side, according to property records.

In another deal, W.P. Carey paid $39 million for a portfolio of four flex-industrial and two office buildings totaling 213,000 square feet. The REIT only revealed that the buildings spread between Texas, Ohio and Louisiana and are leased to a "leading engineering design solutions and analysis provider that serves a broad range of industries."

W.P. Carey’s smallest deal in the United States for the fourth quarter involved buying the 162,000-square-foot headquarters and warehouse facility of Safco Dental Supply based in Buffalo Grove, Illinois, in the Chicago area.

Its two deals in Europe included logistics facilities in Denmark and Sweden leased to Stark Group, a large building and construction supplier, and a distribution center in the United Kingdom leased to Poundstretcher Ltd., a variety discount retailer with 450 locations. Each deal sold for $38 million.
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