Blackstone makes another massive warehouse play in the Chicago area

New York-based financial titan Blackstone Group is at it again in the industrial sector. The firm is buying a 5.9 million-square-foot portfolio of 27 warehouses in the northern Chicago suburbs and southeast Wisconsin.

Blackstone is paying Oak Brook-based industrial landlord CenterPoint Properties about $400 million for 16 properties in Illinois and 11 in Racine and Milwaukee, according to Real Estate Alert.

Though it’s one of the biggest Chicago-area industrial real estate deals in years, it pales in comparison to Blackstone’s almost $19 billion purchase of an industrial portfolio comprising about 1,300 properties across the U.S., the biggest warehouse portfolio deal in history. The total includes about $445 million for Chicago-area proprerties in the portfolio formerly owned by Singaporean company GLP Pte, Crain’s reported.

Since that near record-breaking purchase in June, Blackstone has continued to bet on the hot industrial market, with deals ranging from one-off property acquisitions to a partial selloff of that massive countrywide portfolio. It’s competing with Prologis for the title of biggest industrial real estate portfolio, with about 800 million square feet of warehouse assets.

Before the latest purchase, Blackstone already owned about 80 industrial properties in the Chicago area, according to Real Capital Analytics.

CenterPoint is one of the Chicago area’s biggest industrial landlords and owns 326 buildings totaling 61 million square feet across the U.S. [Crain’s] — Briana Kelly