Bridge Sells 491,010 SF O’Hare Industrial Portfolio, Buys Land Another 656,189 SF of Development

Bridge Development Partners, LLC, has announced the sale of four industrial buildings totaling 491,010 square feet in Chicago’s O’Hare market. The portfolio sale price was $69,275,000. Concurrently, Bridge acquired a 48-acre land site in nearby Franklin Park, IL, for development of three additional buildings totaling 656,189 square feet. The purchase price was $27M.

“In Chicago, and our other U.S. markets Bridge has had some success in developing state-of-the-art distribution facilities in infill locations like O’Hare that are highly desirable to a number of different industrial users,” said Steve Groetsema, Principal and Chicago Market Officer at Bridge Development Partners. “It’s not surprising to see these facilities preleased or leased soon after completion, making them very liquid to investors, and enabling us to buy additional strategically located sites for development.”

Portfolio sale

The Bridge O’Hare Portfolio sale included the following four buildings:

• 1701 Nicholas Boulevard, a 150,520-square-foot building in Elk Grove Village
• 11600 Grand Avenue, a 182,965-square-foot building in Northlake
• 9555 Soreng Avenue, a 72,825-square-foot building in Schiller Park
• 9655 Soreng Avenue, an 84,700-square-foot building in Schiller Park

The buyer, an institutional investor, was undisclosed. No third-party brokers were involved in the transaction.

The buildings were completed between mid-2014 and July 2017. The portfolio was 78 percent leased at the time of sale, with an average weighted remaining lease term of more than nine years. Tenants include Pilot Air Freight Corp. (182,965 square feet), NNR Global Logistics USA, Inc. (150,520 square feet) and Fujitrans U.S.A., Inc. (31,056 square feet).

“This was a great opportunity for Bridge to take some chips off the table and capitalize on the current demand for best-in-class institutional industrial real estate,” Groetsema said. ”These buildings are truly irreplaceable real estate with a phenomenal tenant roster.”

Land acquisition

Bridge has acquired a 48-acre site located at 10601 Franklin Avenue in Franklin Park, IL, a unique tract of infill land in the O’Hare/West Cook County submarket. The site features unparalleled access to O’Hare International Airport, Interstates 290 and 294, and rare tollway visibility along 294.

The site was purchased from Magellan Pipeline Company, a division of Magellan Midstream Partners, an oil pipeline, storage and transportation company. Jeff Provenza of Darwin Realty brokered the sale of the property. Currently, the site houses 14 massive storage tanks and multiple smaller buildings associated with the seller’s use of the site. Within the next few weeks, Bridge will begin demolition activities and other site remediation work. Bridge will further improve the site by widening Franklin Avenue on the northern boundary, adding right-turn and left-turn lanes, and by installing two new traffic signals at the site’s entrances from Belmont Avenue and Franklin Avenue.

Site development plans call for 656,189 square feet of industrial space in three buildings, encompassing 174,625 square feet, 277,762 square feet and 203,802 square feet, respectively. All three buildings will be delivered in the third quarter of 2018, and will include 32’ clear ceiling heights, and above-standard loading, car and trailer parking.

Jeff Provenza and Rick Daley of Darwin Realty have been named exclusive leasing representatives for the property.

“We could not be more excited about this opportunity,” Groetsema said. “This is one of the more visible and notable new industrial developments in Chicago in recent years, on an irreplaceable infill site in one of Chicago’s more dynamic industrial submarkets. The Village of Franklin Park really shared our vision for this site and has been wonderful to work with in getting this off the ground.”