News
NEW GUY HAS INDUSTRIAL MONEY TO SPEND
October 11, 2011
| A new industrial player expects to sign an institutional investment partner by year's end, raise $300M, and then buy 8M SF to 10M SF of warehouses in high-barrier-to-entry East Coast seaports. That means Baltimore, Newark/Elizabeth NJ, and Miami. |
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| Once upon last week, Gene Preston and Woodmont Properties CEO Eric Witmondt (above), along with Romark Logistics CEOMarc Lebovitz, launched Woodmont Industrial Partners. Eric tells us Cushman & Wakefield is playing matchmaker with investment partners, and they're investing their own money and will also co-invest in each purchase. (They're the real Millionaire Matchmakers.) Their targets are the Americas' three largest consumer markets: the DC-Baltimore corridor, the NYC metro, and through Miami, the region of South America and the Caribbean. They also expect to close their first deal, a 729k SF warehouse in Clinton, NJ, by the end of the year. |
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| Gene (reared on Rockefeller, Higgins, and ProLogis) tells us that while Baltimore's port won't achieve the 50-foot depths needed to host the bigger ships allowed by the Panama Canal expansion, its value is as the access point for the federal government-stablized DC-Baltimore corridor. The market's vacancy (12.7%) is higher than the single digits they're looking for, but that has been skewed by the 18% vacancy up north in Harford and Cecil counties. Eric saysthey want modern product but are willing to go for elderly properties with can't-beat locations—say, right on the port. |
