Friday, May 30, 2025
Wednesday, May 28, 2025
Mega-warehouse lease is Philadelphia region's largest so far this year
By Paul Schwedelson – Reporter, Philadelphia Business Journal
Logistics firm Performance Team has signed a lease to occupy the entire 1.2 million-square-foot Box Park Logistics Center in Cinnaminson, according to industry sources, marking the largest industrial lease in the Philadelphia region this year.
The deal — two years after developer Logistics Property Co. completed the building — takes a big chunk of vacant space off the market.
California-based Performance Team was acquired by Denmark-based ocean shipping giant Maersk in 2020 for $545 million.
Box Park Logistics Center is at 995 Taylors Lane in Cinnaminson off of Route 130 and nine miles from the Port of Philadelphia. The South Jersey building has 40-foot clear height, 216 dock doors, four drive-in doors, 549 car parking spots and 216 trailer parking spots.
At 1.2 million square feet, the building ranks among the largest warehouse distribution centers in the Philadelphia region. The property also has room for the building to potentially expand up to an additional 300,000 square feet.
“This project, in size alone, was a tremendous undertaking,” Logistics Property Co. Northeast Region Senior Vice President Mark Glagola said in a statement.
Performance Team did not immediately provide comment on Tuesday.
Chicago-based Logistics Property Co. has been active in the Philadelphia region and has nearly completed the South Penn Logistics Center, a 973,000-square-foot development in Bucks County’s Morrisville, approximately 20 miles over the Delaware River from Box Park Logistics Center.
In 2023, Logistics Property Co. signed chemical giant DuPont as a tenant at the 385,000-square-foot First State Logistics Park in Newark, Delaware.
The 1.2 million-square-foot lease bucks the emerging trend in Philadelphia’s industrial market that tenants are typically looking for smaller spaces often less than 200,000 square feet in a post-pandemic world.
After Philadelphia’s industrial market reached record-low vacancy around 2% to 3% in 2022, the vacancy rate has been steadily rising since then. To respond to the e-commerce boom and address the need for warehouse distribution space, developers rushed to build more supply.
With that new supply being completed around the same time, industry insiders are closely monitoring how that space is absorbed before they consider moving ahead with future projects.
Full story: http://tiny.cc/wz9l001
Local PA developer acquires another Amazon warehouse in FLA as part of $55M deal
By Brian Bandell – Real Estate Editor, Philadelphia Business Journal
Radnor's EQT Real Estate has made another acquisition involving an Amazon.com-leased warehouse.
The real estate investment firm purchased a pair of South Florida warehouses, located in Deerfield Beach and Pompano Beach, for a combined $55.35 million.
The warehouse in Deerfield Beach serves as an Amazon.com delivery station.
Miami-based Elion Partners was the seller. Property data firm Vizzda confirmed the buyer was EQT Real Estate.
In the bigger deal, Elion Partners affiliate EV 1111 SW 30 LLC sold the 165,540-square-foot warehouse at 1111 S.W. 30th Ave. in Deerfield Beach for $37.95 million to Exeter 111 30th LLC. The price equated to $229 per square foot.
The Deerfield Beach warehouse last traded for $22 million in 2020, so it gained in value. It was built on the 13-acre site in 1985.
Meanwhile, Elion Partners affiliate EV 1121 LLC sold the 63,000-square-foot warehouse at 1121 N.W. 31st Ave. in Pompano Beach for $17.4 million to Exeter 1121 31st LLC. The price worked out to $276 per square foot.
Built on the 3.5-acre site in 1989, the Pompano Beach warehouse last sold for $15.25 million in 2022.
This is the third major deal in South Florida for Exeter in the past six months. In November, Exeter bought a Doral warehouse for $20.6 million. In early May, it paid $16.75 million for another Doral warehouse.
EQT Real Estate is formerly known as EQT Exeter and Exeter Property Group. Exeter Property Group was acquired in 2021 by Stockholm private equity firm EQT AB for $1.9 billion.
Full story: http://tiny.cc/5z9l001
Thursday, May 22, 2025
Tuesday, May 20, 2025
Tenants emerge as top buyers of Lehigh Valley industrial warehouse properties
By Brenda Nguyen CoStar Analytics
There's been a significant shift in the Lehigh Valley industrial market as large industrial space users and tenants increasingly opt to buy their formerly leased warehouse and distribution properties.
Recent transaction data from the first quarter reveals that building acquisitions by local users have gained substantial market share during the latest real estate down cycle, especially as institutional investors and REITs have pulled back.
This trend is a notable reversal from previous years when institutional capital dominated the industrial property acquisition market. While REITs, public companies and institutional investors moved to the sidelines amid a higher-risk environment, end-users now have less competition in pursuing property ownership.
Owner-occupant transactions have buoyed recent sales volumes by dollar, accounting for over 40% of the total industrial property sales volume, a notable surge from the 6% to 7% share of the total sales volume in 2022 and 2023.
Current market conditions have created a unique window of opportunity for tenants to become owners. Smaller companies that previously couldn't compete with deep-pocketed institutions are now finding themselves at the negotiating table with a chance to acquire their operational facilities. These owner-user sales could stay elevated as long as investors have difficulty underwriting and financing property purchases.
Monday, May 19, 2025
Wanamaker Building heads to foreclosure auction with $120 million starting bid
By Katie Burke CoStar News
After about two years of foreclosure threats, the historic Wanamaker Building in downtown Philadelphia is headed for auction.
The 114-year-old Center City office property will be up for bids as part of a Philadelphia Sheriff's Office sale in which TF Cornerstone, a New York-based investment firm and the property's primary lender, already has a $120 million head start. The auction will begin on June 3 for the roughly 1.4 million-square-foot building, which has an occupancy rate of about 20% after years of depressed demand and a string of large tenant move-outs.
Similar to other older office properties throughout Philadelphia, the Wanamaker at 100 Penn Square East has struggled to find its post-pandemic footing as companies have both shrunk their real estate footprints and prioritized space in some of the city's newer and nicer options.
The building — which is split between about 950,000 square feet of office space and a recently shuttered Macy's department store — is primarily owned by Rubenstein Partners, a locally based investment firm that paid $114 million for a 60% stake in the property in early 2017 when it was roughly 97% occupied, according to CoStar data.
Yet Rubenstein's financial troubles began to mount shortly thereafter.
In the earlier years of the pandemic, tenants including the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, the United States Army Corps of Engineers and the federal Housing and Urban Development agency vacated about 500,000 square feet after exercising options to terminate their leases.
Rubenstein was unable to backfill the spaces, and in 2021, tried landing a buyer for the building after investing upward of $30 million in capital improvements as part of a plan to upgrade and reposition the property.
That plan fell flat, however, and a couple of years later, the $124 million loan on the Wanamaker Building fell into receivership. The servicer slashed its appraised value from $185.7 million when the loan was issued in 2018 to less than $54.5 million, equating to a roughly 72% drop.
Betting on a turnaround
While most lenders are reticent to transition into landlords, TF Cornerstone began building up its stake in the historic building when it purchased a majority of the property's debt last year. The investment firm purchased the retail portion of the Wanamaker for $40 million in late 2019, at which point the space was still fully occupied by Macy's. Since then, it has reportedly been exploring a potential residential conversion plan for the remainder of the building.
Given TF Cornerstone's credit for the auction, any interested bidder would have to submit an offer of more than $120 million in order to remain competitive.
Distressed properties have fueled Philadelphia's office sales market in recent years as the city struggles to work through a record amount of available space. Companies in the area handed back more than 7.6 million square feet between 2019 and 2023, according to CoStar data, and rents have fallen alongside the decline in tenant demand.
What's more, about 3 million square feet of leases are set to expire through the remainder of this year, an amount that could prolong the market's recovery even as large employers such as Chubb, FS Investments and Vanguard have expanded their office stakes in the region.
Even so, Philadelphia's roughly 14% availability rate is the second lowest in the country, according to the data, and the city's diverse economic base has made eager investors optimistic about a prospective rebound. Private buyers and investment firms have accounted for about 60% of the sales that have closed in the area over the past year, many of which traded at just a fraction of their previous prices.
