March 2, 2021 -- Chicago, IL – Avison Young announced today that it has negotiated the sale of an institutional quality, 587,720-square-foot (sf) industrial property at 537 Omni Industrial Boulevard in Summerville, SC, in the Charleston market. The building was constructed in 2018 and is fully leased to 3G Distribution Services, a third-party logistics provider.
Avison Young Principals Erik Foster and Mike Wilson who are members of the company’s National Industrial Capital Markets Group, were engaged to represent the seller, Clarius Partners LLC, a full-service real estate investment and development company, along with their partner Wanxiang America Real Estate Group, a Chicago-based real estate investment firm. Foster and Wilson also successfully raised the development equity on Clarius’ behalf, in order to commence the project.
The buyer was an institutional real estate venture capital firm.
“After raising the development equity for Clarius and then completing the sale, it was a pleasure to work on this project all the way through to its completion. This state-of-the-art facility checked all the boxes from an investment perspective and drew a strong response from capital sources around the globe,” said Foster who leads the firm’s National Industrial Capital Markets Group. “These types of fully leased assets in strong logistics markets will continue to be in demand due to their ability to support the growing e-commerce, logistics, and the manufacturing sector.”
The Class A facility is on a 43-acre site within the Omni Industrial Campus, a 221-acre master planned business park that provides proximity to the Port of Charleston and direct access to I-26, the main transportation artery in the region. The park is in the heart of the Southeast’s growing manufacturing corridor that has drawn global companies such as Daimler, Boeing, Volvo, and Cummins.
The Charleston industrial market has seen significant demand in recent years due to its low tax structure and connectivity to the port and major U.S. transportation corridors. According to Avison Young research, the South Carolina Ports Authority (SCPA) is getting ready for the March 2021 opening of a new container terminal in North Charleston that will initially add capacity to handle another 700,000 20-foot cargo containers. The average number of containers handled at the port has nearly doubled over the last decade and the SCPA finished 2020 with its strongest December on record. Cargo figures reflected an increase of 11.6% in twenty-foot equivalent container units handled.
The Charleston market, which has become an international center for high technology, business services, automotive and aerospace manufacturing, ranks in the top 15 for overall U.S. export activity. Over the past year, Wal-Mart, A&R Logistics, and Frontier Logistics each signed leases of more than 500,000 square feet in the Charleston market.
