LBA Realty has put more industrial real estate under control in the coveted warehousing market surrounding O’Hare International Airport.
Irvine, California-based LBA coughed up $95 million to buy two buildings, at 555-575 North Northwest Avenue in Northlake, suited for logistics and refrigerated storage. Newark, New Jersey-based PGIM Real Estate is the seller, public records show.
The price was about $198 per square foot for 480,000 square feet of rentable space.
PGIM exited the deal with more than it put into the properties, even as Chicagoland industrial real estate vacancy rates are rising on the heels of near-record market expansion. It paid almost $83 million for them in 2019, including a $57 million loan from Fifth Third Bank, public records show.
Industrial vacancy rates are creeping up from the record lows of less than 5 percent maintained during the pandemic as Chicagoland developers begin delivering warehousing developments built on speculation (without having leases in hand before starting construction).
The supply of industrial buildings 200,000 square feet or larger started to outpace demand in the third quarter of last year, according to Colliers. Vacancy rates jumped to 7.6 percent, compared to 3.5 percent in the third quarter of 2002.
Neither LBA, founded by Phil Belling and Steve Layton, nor PGIM returned requests for comment.
Read more
Commercial
Chicago
Mars sells Goose Island building to LBA Logistics for $28M
Commercial
Chicago
PGIM reels in Heartland Alliance for Loop lease as nonprofit downsizes
Commercial
San Francisco
PGIM pays $103M for logistics center in Hayward
For the buyer, the deal adds to a collection of assets it has assembled in the O’Hare area. Its latest acquisition is adjacent to a data center along Interstate 294 that just pulled in a $702 million refinancing loan.
LBA’s warehousing assets are just north of Texas-based Aligned Data Centers’ 520,000-square-foot data storage property in Northlake, where Toronto-Dominion Bank and Wilmington Trust provided the huge debt package, which was the biggest real estate loan issued for a Cook County property last year.