Prologis Pays Blackstone $97M for FedEx Warehouse

Prologis has paid a premium price of $96.6 million for a 311,400-square-foot warehouse in the Inland Empire.

The San Francisco-based real estate investment trust picked up the distribution center leased to FedEx at 3255 and 11600 Cactus Avenue in Bloomington, the Commercial Observer reported.

The seller was Blackstone, based in New York, as part of a $3.1 billion deal this summer for 14 million square feet of industrial buildings across the U.S.

The sale of the Bloomington warehouse for $96.6 million works out to $310 per square foot.

That’s higher than the $259-per-square-foot average sales price for industrial space in the first half of the year in the Inland Empire, according to the Observer.

The warehouse, built in 2014 on 36 acres, has been owned by New York-based Gramercy Property Trust, which was acquired by Blackstone in 2018. It’s within an industrial corridor that has distribution warehouses for Amazon.com, Walmart and other retailers.

Prologis picked up the property in late June as part of its purchase of 70 industrial sites from Blackstone-run funds in the $3.1 billion deal. The portfolio includes properties in Atlanta, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., California, Dallas, Las Vegas, New York and New Jersey, Phoenix and South Florida. The REIT plans to hold onto all its new industrial real estate.

As part of the deal, it picked up a 246,000-square-foot industrial and research building in Fremont for $86.6 million, or $352 per square foot.

“These high-quality properties are complementary to our portfolio and fit perfectly into our long-term strategic plan for growth,” Prologis President Dan Letter said in June.

More than $2.44 billion in industrial property sales closed in the first six months of the year in the Inland Empire, according to a report by CommercialEdge.

Southern California also continues to see the largest industrial rent gains in the nation, with increases of 17.4 percent in the Inland Empire over the past 12 months.

“Where you invest matters, and this transaction demonstrates the exceptional demand for high-quality warehouses,” Nadeem Meghji, head of Blackstone Real Estate Americas, told the Observer.

Blackstone said it owns $100 billion of warehouses in North America and $175 billion globally.

Prologis said it owns 1.2 billion square feet of logistics real estate in 19 countries. The industrial giant posted record profits in the second quarter on revenue of $2.45 billion, or nearly double the $1.25 billion from the same period a year ago. Net earnings came to $1.22 billion.

— Dana Bartholomew