Bridge Development Partners and Bentall Kennedy Announce New Built-to-Suit Development for Frozen Assets Cold Storage
Bridge Development Partners, LLC and Bentall Kennedy, on behalf of an institutional client account, today announced plans to develop a 285,000-square-foot state-of-the-art facility for Frozen Assets Cold Storage (“FACS”), a third-party cold storage facility and service provider. The announcement of the $50-million project marks the third cold storage deal between Bridge and FACS, and the first outside of Chicago.
The new building—being developed on a build-to-suit basis for FACS with a 15-year lease in place—will feature 50-foot clear height ceilings and will be the most advanced cold storage facility in the Savannah region. The project was driven by the strong demand for a state-of-the-art cold storage building to meet the refrigerated import and export needs of the Port of Savannah.
“As the fourth largest port market in the United States and an optimal location for food distribution operations in the Eastern U.S., Savannah is a critical market for FACS to expand its platform,” said Brian Niven, Senior Vice President, Cold Storage at Bridge Development Partners. “We were thrilled to have the opportunity to continue to build our relationship with a valued client in what was a unique transaction for Bridge. Because we primarily operate in five core commercial real estate markets, our Cold Storage team had to be especially diligent and creative in navigating the complexities associated with working in this new market for the first time to bring the project to fruition.”
As part of the transaction process, Bridge embarked on an extensive search for a capital partner with an investment strategy specifically aligned with the unique attributes of this project. Having worked with Bentall Kennedy on a similar cold storage transaction in Seattle in 2016, Bridge ultimately identified the company as the ideal capital partner to move forward with for FACS’ new facility.
Start of construction on the new facility is imminent, and it is expected to be delivered to market in early 2020.
“The success of Frozen Assets Cold Storage has always been predicated on providing premium service to our customers and to our community,” said Mike Street, President of FACS. “We couldn’t be more excited about the opportunity to bring that service to the great city of Savannah and to the state of Georgia as a whole.”
Since 2010, Bridge has acquired and developed more than 1.5 million square feet of cold storage space, located in the Chicago and Seattle markets. Demand for cold storage facilities has soared nationally in recent years, with little-to-no vacancy in modern state-of-the-art cold storage space located in the primary and secondary commercial real estate markets.
