The private equity firm paid $84 million for a 915,000-square-foot Dr. Pepper-Snapple bottling plant in Northlake, property records show. The beverage maker leases the property.
The property at 400 N. Wolf Road encompasses 47 acres, according to marketing materials from the seller, Oak Brook-based firm Centerpoint Properties.
Apollo is funding the purchase with a $375 million mortgage from its own network of companies. The lenders on the transaction are Athene, an insurance firm that Apollo acquired last March; and Jackson National Life Insurance, which is partly owned by Athene. Apollo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The transaction marks Centerpoint’s continued retreat from the Chicago industrial market. In February, the firm sold a 1.1 million-square-foot portfolio to Blackstone Group in a $151 million deal.
Before being repurposed as a bottling plant, the Wolf Road property housed telephone switching equipment maker Automatic Electric Company until the 1990s. In 2017, it was partly demolished and then expanded to include additional offices and warehouse as well as a separate 500,000-square-foot industrial building, the Chicago Tribune previously reported.
The sale comes as industrial vacancies in Chicago hit record lows. According to the latest report from JLL, vacancies in the I-55 corridor have reached their lowest levels since the third quarter of 2016. Asking rents and net absorption also rose.