Crow Holdings completes $164M sale of Franklin Township logistics property

Crow Holdings Industrial (CHI) on Tuesday said it sold a 925,000-square-foot, fully occupied warehouse in Franklin Township to BentallGreenOak on behalf of an institutional investor for $164 million.

Located at 50 Veronica Ave., the newly built property was developed in partnership with The Carlyle Group and is fully leased to LG Electronics USA, which commenced its seven-year tenancy in April 2020.

Cushman & Wakefield’s East Rutherford-based Capital Markets team of Vice Chairman Gary Gabriel, Executive Vice Chairman Andrew Merin and Managing Director Kyle Schmidt represented CHI in the transaction.

“With strong pricing, this transaction evidences that best-in-market industrial real estate remains liquid, despite the economic and health stories in the press,” said Gabriel.

Clark Machemer, senior managing director of CHI’s Northeast region, stated: “While the pandemic has brought most investment activity to a standstill, there is still tremendous demand for state-of-the-art logistics properties. Further, having LG in place as a long-term tenant made this a particularly desirable asset.”

50 Veronica Ave. was the first project in the Northeast for CHI and serves as a prototype of a successful development for the company. With collaboration from the municipality and its key partners on the project, CHI was able to acquire, build and lease the property in less than 18 months.

Machemer cited Cushman & Wakefield’s persistence and execution as critical to the deal’s success.

“It’s difficult to complete any transaction given the current situation, but the Cushman team did an excellent job of bypassing obstacles and bringing us to closing. Their skill at delivering the information and important attributes of the deal made the process very smooth from both the buyer’s and seller’s perspectives.”

After CHI began its Northeast operations with the hire of Machemer in 2018, CHI and an investment fund advised by The Carlyle Group acquired the site from 2020 acquisitions in early 2019 and began construction several months later.

Carlyle’s equity for its investment in the Franklin Township development came from the Carlyle Realty Partners VIII fund.