Blackstone finds cash in armored cars as part of $99M Chicago deal

Blackstone found cash in armored cars as part of the $99 million sale of seven suburban Chicago properties to a Singapore-based real estate investor.

The sale by an affiliate of the investment giant includes a 169,000-square-foot industrial warehouse fully leased to GardaWorld, the security and cash transportation firm, and six other industrial assets totaling more than 1.4 million square feet, according to public records and the buyer, a unit of CapitaLand Investment. The Asian firm entered the U.S. logistics market in November.

13144 S Pulaski Road, Alsip, IL (Loopnet, iStock)

A food distributor occupies the priciest asset in the deal, which is also the most remote from downtown Chicago, in rural Ogle County about 80 miles from the Loop. Del Monte Foods leases a building on 14 acres there valued at $35.5 million in the Blackstone deal, public records show. It last sold in 2019 in a deal that valued it at about $33 million.

472-482 Thomas Drive, Bensenville, IL (Loopnet, iStock)

Blackstone assembled the seven-property portfolio between 2013 and 2019 for a combined $73 million. The premium from the sale illustrates how even stable industrial assets such as the longtime GardaWorld home, built 60 years ago, have gained value during a pandemic that led to an unprecedented price boom for warehousing.

540-570 Congress Circle, Roselle, IL (Loopnet, iStock)

While record amounts of new industrial development are in the pipeline in the Chicago area, with builders especially bullish on big-box properties of at least 200,000 square feet, there’s been a spillover from the all-time-high level of demand for warehouses that has lifted values of older and smaller Class B properties, such as the GardaWorld parcel.

Blackstone, which did the deal through its Revantage affiliate, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

490 Windy Point Drive, Glendale Heights, IL (Loopnet, iStock)

The other five properties involved in the deal include:

• A 370,000-square-foot building at 13144 South Pulaski Road in suburban Alsip;
• The 118,000-square-foot property at 472 Thomas Drive in Bensenville;
• The 101,000-square-foot building at 540 Congress Circle in suburban Roselle;
• The 44,000-square-foot building at 490 Windy Point Drive in Glendale Heights;
• And the 43,000-square-foot property at 3950 Sussex Avenue in Aurora.

Blackstone isn’t alone among institutional investors to have recently moved on from older Chicago-area warehousing, as the industrial market keeps setting historically high prices. New York’s KKR in May sold a 310,000-square-foot distribution center built in 1979 at 4404 West Ann Lurie Place in Chicago’s Archer Heights neighborhood for $32 million, more than a year after buying it for $27 million.

Another Blackstone affiliate spent $150 million earlier this year to acquire a dozen industrial park assets in the far north suburbs of Waukegan and Zion.

With the transaction closed, Ascendas, the CapitaLand subsidiary, owns at least 228 properties, 48 of which are in the U.S.

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