Covington gets 3.4M sf in IE’s priciest deal of year

Dallas-based firm pays $252M for seven buildings in High Desert from Stirling Development

Kenneth Sheer, president and chief executive officer, Covington Group (City of Victorville, Covington Group)
Kenneth Sheer, president and chief executive officer, Covington Group (City of Victorville, Covington Group)

A Dallas-based firm has taken a big bite out of the Inland Empire’s industrial inventory in the priciest deal of the year for the two-county market.

Covington Group purchased seven industrial buildings spanning nearly 3.4 million square feet in Victorville, near the Southern California Logistics Airport, the firm announced this week.

Covington paid $252 million to acquire the sites from a limited liability company linked to Stirling Development, San Bernardino County records show. The Inland Empire market covers both San Bernardino and neighboring Riverside counties.

Stirling built the seven buildings between 2008 and 2013 with an eye on the City of Victorville’s larger plan to redevelop a former U.S. Air Force base nearby, according to Stirling’s website.

The buildings are leased to a number of tenants, including Newell Brands, M&M Mars, Boeing and Plastipak Packaging, Covington said in a statement.

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Covington CEO Ken Sheer said the firm would work to “accommodate renewals and expansions” for tenants.

The deal is the biggest transaction by square feet as well as the most expensive for industrial space in the Inland Empire so far this year. In the third quarter, Pacific Investment Management bought a 1.1 million-square-foot warehouse in Rialto for $123.5 million.

It also beats recent deals in Los Angeles’ South Bay, another major hub of warehousing and logistics, owing to its proximity to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Earlier this month, Rexford Industrial Realty paid $217 million to buy an 80-acre industrial storage site.

But, the deal isn’t the largest in terms of price per square foot. At around $74 per square foot, the deal is dwarfed by other recent transactions in the Inland Empire — Nuveen bought a 236,700-square-foot building in Ontario in August for $252 a foot.