LM Real Estate Spends $97M to buy Charlotte Distribution Center

LM Real Estate Partners just made a huge splash in Charlotte’s industrial market.

The New York-based firm bought the 1.4 million-square-foot Premier Distribution Center, at 1900 Continental Boulevard, for $97 million, the Charlotte Business Journal reported. The price, about $69 per square foot, marks the largest industrial sale of the year in Charlotte.

The seller was a joint venture of Somerset Properties and Waterfall Asset Management, represented by Avison Young brokers Chris Skibinski, Chris Loyd and Erik Foster. The Somerset-Waterfall venture bought the property for $63.8 million, $45 per square foot, in 2019.

The site, located in southwest Charlotte, previously served as a Continental Tire plant, before that company moved its operations to South Carolina in 2014. It was subsequently repurposed.

Premier Distribution’s sharp rise in value sheds light on a strong industrial market that’s been buoyed by an increase of e-commerce since the pandemic. Charlotte saw 340,000 square feet of positive net absorption in the first quarter, according to Cushman & Wakefield.

Industrial vacancies rose to 5.6 percent, up roughly 3 percent year-over-year, but that’s largely the result of overzealous developers, with nearly 17.7 million square feet of new supply flooding Charlotte’s industrial market over the last five quarters.

Despite robust industrial demand, LM Real Estate has some challenges on its plate. Tenants Snyder’s-Lance and the U.S. Postal Service are vacating the distribution center, contributing to more than 436,000 square feet of available space, the outlet reported.

Other tenants include Spirit Halloween, Professional Builders Supply, Harris Tire, Snap One and Deufol North America.

The purchase marks LM Real Estate’s second acquisition in southwest Charlotte. The firm paid $82 million for the 870,100-square-foot Logistics Pointe Distribution Center in October, $94 per square foot. That property was fully leased at the time of sale.

—Quinn Donoghue