Stonemont Pays $80M for properties near Amazon shipping facility

An Atlanta real estate firm paid $80.3 million for more than 802,000 square feet of properties near an Amazon delivery facility in Chicago’s McKinley Park.

Stonemont Financial Group bought parcels at 3501, 3601, 3647 and 3651 South Ashland Avenue, Cook County property records show. The seller, an entity named SFG Ashland LLC, and the buyer, SFG STPK LM Ashland LLC, had the same address. Stonemont didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The 3501 address was the largest, at 652,450 square feet, and is part of Amazon’s last-mile shipping facility, Google Maps showed. The rest of the properties are either outdated buildings or empty space. Amazon, which tends to be tight-lipped about its real estate plans, declined to say whether it plans to use Stonemont’s properties as warehouses.

Stonemont and Karis Industrial bought the nearby 260,000-square-foot former Wrigley gum factory at 3535 South Ashland Avenue in 2019 and spent $23 million to turn it into the Amazon facility. The site, located about 10 minutes from downtown, has dozens of truck docks and parking space for hundreds of trailers.

Amazon has been gobbling up industrial sites in Goose Island, Pullman and Gage Park. It also has warehouses in more far-flung areas in Skokie, University Park and Channahon. Last month, it opened two five-story warehouses in suburban Matteson and Markham that contain 7.2 million square feet.

Stonemont, which manages about 15 million square feet of industrial real estate, formed a joint venture in March with an affiliate of Cerberus Capital Management to buy as much as $1 billion of industrial property. The venture will target logistics properties focused on last-mile distribution facilities, truck terminals and maintenance facilities. Most recently, the firm paid $25 million for a 43,000-square-foot building in South Holland.