Amazon inks lease for first distribution center in Queens

The e-commerce giant signed an 83K sf lease at Woodside

26-15 Boody Street in Queens (Credit: Eastern Consolidated and Wikipedia)
26-15 Boody Street in Queens (Credit: Eastern Consolidated and Wikipedia)

Amazon is opening its first fulfillment center in Queens at the site of the former Bulova watch company headquarters in Woodside, sources told The Real Deal.

The e-commerce giant signed a lease for 83,000 square feet with San Francisco-based Terreno Realty Corporation, which bought the three-acre campus near the intersection of Queens’ major highways in March for $25.17 million, according to sources familiar with the deal.

Representatives for Terreno and Amazon could not be immediately reached for comment.

The new fulfillment and distribution center marks a further expansion into the five boroughs for the e-tailer and provides a boost of confidence for investors betting that demand from e-commerce companies will boost industrial property values.

Nationwide, the availability rate for warehouse space stood at 7.2 percent in the second quarter of the year – the tightest it’s been since the dot-com boom of the early 2000s.

The Woodside facility, which has an address of 26-15 Boody Street, sits near the intersection of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the Grand Central Parkway, providing easy access to vast swaths of the city.

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Terreno, a real estate investment trust that focus on industrial properties, announced on Thursday that it had signed an 11-year lease for the full building with “a leading e-commerce firm,” but didn’t identify the tenant.

A CBRE team of Brad Cohen, Jacob Tzfanya and Jon Kamali represented Torreno in the deal, and declined to comment on the transaction. The brokers, who joined CBRE in June, picked up the assignment while at their old firm Eastern Consolidated, where they represented Torreno in its purchase of the Bulova center.

Their colleagues Andrew Sasson and Chad Sinsheimer, who have since joined Ackmann-Ziff, also represented Torreno in the deal, while Eastern’s Brian Ezratty and Gary Meese – now at Newmark Knight Frank – sold the property on behalf of the watchmaker.

Financial terms of the lease, which commences on Dec. 1 of this year, were not available. Terreno expects the property to have a stabilized cap rate of 6.3 percent once the center is fully redeveloped.

Amazon’s lease covers 90,000 square feet of parking spread across two lots and a billboard facing the BQE.

The company also plans to open a $100 million, 855,000 -square-foot fulfillment center on Staten Island.