Two Chicago‑area investment firms with deep ties to Blackstone acquired a major FedEx distribution center in Niles, outside Chicago, for a discounted $72.2 million.
Centaur Capital Partners and Talos Capital purchased the 314,028‑square‑foot facility at 5959 West Howard Street, according to property records and brokerage JLL, CoStar News reported. The price represents a decline from the $84.3 million purchase price seller Sedco Capital, a Saudi Arabia–based investment manager, paid in 2019.
The deal adds to a rebound of activity in Chicago’s industrial market. Investors have deployed $4 billion into the sector over the past 12 months, a 15 percent increase, year-over-year, based on CoStar data.
The facility is a mission‑critical hub for FedEx because of its strategic location one mile from I-94 and eight miles from O’Hare International Airport.
Memphis, Tennessee-based FedEx has occupied the property since its completion in 2015, and JLL noted that more than 11 acres of excess land on the site offer future development potential.
Kurt Sarbaugh, one of the JLL executives who brokered the deal, said “It is incredibly difficult to assemble a site in North Cook County large enough to accommodate a facility of this size with all of the additional car and trailer parking space required for an operation like this.”
The buyers have longstanding Blackstone lineage. Centaur Capital Partners, based in Lake Forest, serves as the family office of John Schreiber, co-founder of Blackstone Real Estate Advisors. Schreiber recently invested roughly $180 million in Chicago multifamily projects, including the Parker Fulton Market tower and Cobbler Square Lofts, in partnership with JDL Development.
Talos Capital, based in Westchester, Illinois and led by Brian Townsend, previously served as Blackstone’s industrial investment arm beginning in 2017 and prior to the creation of Link Logistics in 2019.
The company served as lender on the failed HFZ condo project in Chicago. Townsend also partnered with Centaur in 2018 to assemble a 5 million‑square‑foot industrial portfolio across Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and El Paso, Texas.
The seller of the Niles property, Sedco Capital, traces its origins to the Saudi Economic Development Company, founded in 1976. It evolved into a family office for the Bin Mahfouz family in 1996 and later expanded into a multi‑investor firm in 2009.
JLL’s Sarbaugh, Sean Devaney and John Huguenard represented the seller in the deal.
— Joel Russell