A cold storage facility in Houston has been leased up before construction has even finished.
Houston-based Boomerang Interests and partner CenterSquare Investment Management signed Michigan-based cold storage firm Lineage Logistics to a long-term lease at a 315,000-square-foot facility under development at 7500 Uvalde Road, the firms announced on Tuesday.
Terms of the lease were not disclosed.
The warehouse, which sprawls across 23 acres, was set to open in the first quarter, according to previous marketing materials from Colliers, but construction delays have pushed the scheduled opening to this month.
Designed for food storage, distribution and processing, the facility has 38 dock doors and parking for 57 trailers and 181 cars.
Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania-based CenterSquare is the investor behind the project and teamed up with Boomerang to develop the property. Boomerang keeps offices in the upscale Tanglewood district and is focused on constructing build-to-suit and spec developments for cold storage, according to its website.
Investor interest in cold storage has grown over the last two years, as food distributors have pivoted to holding more inventory on hand. Disruptions and delays to movements of perishable goods and the need to store Covid-19 vaccines at low temperatures also contributed to demand for these facilities.
New development of cold storage has soared in response, according to CBRE — about 3.3 million square feet of cold storage space was under development across the U.S. in the second quarter, compared to 300,000 square feet in 2019.
Developers and investors, like CenterSquare and Boomerang, also have to rely on a select few cold storage operators, like Lineage Logistics, for leases. With Americold Realty Trust, Lineage Logistics accounts for 71 percent of all of the country’s refrigerated warehouse space.
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