CoStar News (August 27, 2020) – The two-building logistics complex in Lancaster, Texas, outside of Dallas, was one of the properties to trade hands in the portfolio deal. (Crow Holdings)
By Candace Carlisle
Crow Holdings, a Dallas-based real estate investment and development firm, has sold a U.S. industrial portfolio it developed to a global investor in one of the largest deals of its kind since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The portfolio totals nearly 4.7 million square feet spanning 15 buildings in five key U.S. cities with growing population centers near gateway airports: Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Fort Worth and Phoenix.
The firm, with funds managed by Crow Holdings Capital, its real estate investment management arm, sold the portfolio to PGIM Real Estate, a Madison, New Jersey-based global investor managing more than $1 trillion across a variety of assets, including real estate. PGIM paid $425 million for the portfolio, according to a statement from PGIM.
The deal marks one of the largest industrial portfolios to trade during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Crow Holdings, with its leased occupancy across the portfolio improving three-fold during the sale process. Tenants include a variety of national retail chains and companies, including a recently signed Mars Petcare, Berlin Packaging, Comptree and Amazon, according to CoStar data.
The properties in the portfolio include:
- A two-building industrial complex at 2801 N. Houston School Road and a neighboring site totaling more than 1.2 million square feet of industrial space in Lancaster, Texas, a suburb just south of downtown Dallas.
- A 251,501-square-foot industrial building at 725 Factory Shoals Road in Lithia Springs, Georgia, a suburb less than 15 miles from downtown Atlanta.
- A 262,530-square-foot industrial building at 965 Douglas Hill Road in Lithia Springs, Georgia, outside of Atlanta.
- A 442,000-square-foot logistics hub at 1720 Peachtree Industrial Blvd. in Buford, Georgia, which is about 40 miles northeast of downtown Atlanta.
- A 209,192-square-foot industrial building at 6525 Mall Blvd. in Union City, Georgia, about 18 miles south of downtown Atlanta.
- A two-building industrial complex at 10205 W. Roosevelt St. and 10209 W. Roosevelt St. in Avondale, Arizona, about 13 miles outside of Phoenix.
- A four-building, 1 million-square-foot logistics hub called Carter Distribution Center, which includes the building at 6633 Oak Grove Road in Fort Worth, Texas, which is part of Dallas-Fort Worth, the fourth largest metropolitan area in the country with more than 7.5 million residents.
- A three-building, 594,400-square-foot industrial complex near Tower Road and East 84th Avenue in Denver.
Crow Holdings, a 70-year-old company, plans to capitalize on the forces driving the growth of e-commerce in the last several years, said Michael Levy, CEO of Crow Holdings. The pandemic has further accelerated those forces with increased e-commerce sales and a renewed focus for companies to keep deeper inventory levels, he said, adding all these forces point to a positive long-term outlook for industrial real estate.
Crow Holdings has 46 industrial projects currently in its development pipeline.
JLL is projecting e-commerce sales to hit $1.5 trillion, increasing the demand for industrial real estate by an additional 1 billion square feet. That has developers, including Crow Holdings, continuing to bet on new speculative industrial development to meet that anticipated demand.
Dallas-Fort Worth ranks as the nation’s No. 1 industrial market based on supply and demand, according to a Cushman & Wakefield report published earlier this year. Atlanta, which also pops up in the portfolio is ranked as one of the top U.S. markets in the report.
