UPDATED, Sept. 11, 6:08 p.m.: New York developers are continuing to flock to industrial even as the pace of other commercial deals has slowed.
Turnbridge Equities has entered into a joint venture with Dune Real Estate Partners to develop a last-mile distribution center on a 14-acre site at 980 East 149th Street in Hunts Point, the companies announced.
The partners also secured $105 million in pre-development financing from J.P. Morgan for the project, dubbed the Bronx Logistics Center.
JLL’s Christopher Peck, Peter Rotchford, and Kristin Knapp arranged the debt financing for Turnbridge, while JLL’s Andrew Scandalios, Tyler Peck and Thomas Pryor arranged the equity financing.
Turnbridge — a real estate investment firm led by Andrew Joblon with offices across the U.S. — has been scooping up industrial space in the tri-state area in recent years. Last year, the company paid $39.5 million for a 129,000-square-foot warehouse in Queens, and $61 million for a 1 million-square-foot industrial site in New Jersey. It began assembling the Bronx site in 2018, spending a total of $174 million for the purchase of five parcels, property records show.
Turnbridge and Dune claim their new facility could be one of the largest multi-story, last-mile distribution facilities in New York, according to the release. The developers are in good company: RXR Realty and LBA Logistics are developing a four-story, 770,000-square-foot warehouse in Queens, which Amazon has agreed to lease.
Investment activity in warehouse and logistics spaces has soared with the rise of e-commerce in recent years. The volume of industrial deals in the New York metropolitan area totaled $4.6 billion in 2014, and rose to $8.4 billion in 2019, according to Newmark Knight Frank. And unlike other asset classes, the pandemic has been a boon for the sector.
Amazon, which saw record sales in the second quarter, in June leased a 200,000-square-foot warehouse in the Bronx that was previously used by its rival Jet.com.