Blackstone buys LaGuardia warehouse for $56M with financing from Nuveen

The Blackstone Group continues to up its industrial game at a time when logistics properties remain hot commodities.

The private equity firm picked up a two-story industrial building at 83-15 24th Avenue near LaGuardia Airport in Queens for $55.5 million, according to public records filed Wednesday with the New York City Department of Finance.

The seller was Steel Equities, which had bought the building in 2010 for $22.7 million. FedEx Ground is a tenant.

Nuveen, the investment arm of TIAA, provided nearly $39 million in financing.

Steel Equities and Nuveen did not immediately return requests for comment. Blackstone declined to comment.

Blackstone has made other big industrial plays of late, including closing on the $7.6 billion acquisition of Gramercy Property Trust. The REIT owned 81 million square feet of real estate, comprised mostly of single-tenant industrial properties.

In 2017, Blackstone also bought Boston-based Cabot Properties’ industrial portfolio for $1.8 billion.

And around the city, investors and buyers are dropping big bucks for logistics properties.

Steel Equities, a Bethpage, New York-based investor that specializes in industrial properties and warehouses, in December paid $53 million for a vacant warehouse at 333 Johnson Avenue in Brooklyn that spans 161,000 square feet. Sellers Normandy Real Estate Partners, Princeton Holdings and Royalton Capital had bought the building for $26.8 million in 2015.

Also in December, UPS bought a huge Red Hook industrial site for $303 million. Seller Sitex Group had purchased the parcels in 2017 for $110 million.