A huge industrial deal in southern Dallas County has taken a big block of new North Texas warehouse

April 17, 2019

by Steve Brown
Dallas Morning News

https://www.dallasnews.com/business/real-estate/2019/04/17/huge-wilmer-warehouse-deal-gobbles-1-million-square-feet

Chicago-based Logistics Property Co. has leased more than 1 million square feet of its Southport Logistics Park on Interstate 45 in Wilmer. The warehouse deal is one of the largest in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in the last couple of years.

Logistics Property would not disclose the name of the tenant, describing it as "an iconic American consumer packaged goods manufacturer." But real estate brokers who've been tracking the mega transaction say the lease is with J.M. Smucker Co. The more than century-old manufacturer of jams, jellies and other food products has been scouting the market for a new warehouse location.

Smucker representatives did not respond to a request for details about the new distribution center. Smucker had more than $7 billion in sales in 2018 and has major distribution centers in Ohio, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Colorado, Illinois and California.

The new warehouse building at 1200 Fulghum Road east of I-45 is one of two that Logistics Property owns in the 252-acre Southport Logistics Park. The other building is leased to Amazon. The buildings are near Union Pacific's huge intermodal rail hub.

Plans for the $500 million Southport Logistics Park call for more than 3 million square feet of buildings. The project was started in 2016 by Dallas' Port Logistics Reality and Diamond Realty Investments, a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Corp.

In December, Logistics Property bought the project, marking the Chicago company's entry into the North Texas market. "We're excited to announce Southport Logistics Park's first two state-of-the-art logistics facilities are now 100% leased," Logistics Properties executive vice president Kent Newsom said in a statement. The developer said it plans two more buildings in the project with 1.2 million square feet and 850,000 square feet of space. Logistics Properties has more than $1 billion of properties in markets including Houston, Chicago, and Seattle-Tacoma.

The just-completed 1.1 million square foot Southport lease was handled by CBRE's Kacy Jones and John Hendricks in negotiations with Allen Gump, Lynn Reich and Suzanne Serino of Colliers International. The D-FW area is one of the country's busiest warehouse and distribution building markets with more than 30 million square feet of projects under construction. Businesses net-leased more than 5 million square feet of North Texas warehouses in just the first quarter. Most of the demand is coming from e-commerce and consumer products firms.