W.B. Mason, the largest privately-held U.S. seller of office supplies, is opening its first distribution center in the city. The Brockton, Mass.-based company inked a 10-year lease for a total of 173,000 square feet on the site of one-story Bronx warehouse.
The lease, which comes with a five-year option, covers a 107,000-square-foot space inside the property at 1150-1170 Commerce Avenue and 66,000 square feet of off-street parking and loading zone. The building is located in the Castle Hill neighborhood, in the Bronx’s South Central section.
Upper East Side-based investment firm BNS Real Estate owns the roughly 160,000-square-foot building, which is also occupied by water-jug manufacturer D.S. Waters. Industrial Acoustics Company, which makes sound-control products, formerly leased the space that W.B. Mason would now fill.
A Pinnacle Realty team led by James Tack and Fred Stein represented the tenant and the landlord.
W.B. Mason, which is a major sponsor of Major League Baseball game coverage, also has an outdoor loading site at 460 Kingsland Avenue in Greenpoint. The company plans to move into the Bronx space in the next two months.
Two other businesses are taking massive Bronx spreads for industrial use. Online grocer FreshDirect is building a 500,000-square-foot distribution center at the Harlem River Yards in Port Morris, and food delivery service Plated inked a lease for 84,000 square feet in Hunts Point.
Philip Rosen, a lawyer at Weil, Gotshal & Manges who often represents companies buying industrial space in the city but was not involved in the W.B. Mason deal, said he is a seeing a trend regarding firms taking huge space, especially in the Bronx.
“The Bronx has its advantages, in that the price rise hasn’t hit as hard there,” Rosen said. “There is easy access to main roads going into Manhattan, allowing for a faster delivery time.”