CBRE’s Chuck Leitner and Amazon warehouses at 12555 Flatlands Avenue and 12595 Flatlands Avenue (March Associates Construction, CBRE, iStock, Illustration by Kevin Cifuentes for The Real Deal)
Wildflower has chosen to let Amazon’s warehousing bloom in East New York under different ownership.
The company sold two Brooklyn warehouses operated by Amazon to CBRE Investment Management for $230 million, the Commercial Observer reported. The all-cash deal unfolded earlier this month; CBRE’s Doug Middleton and Brian Fiumara represented both sides of the deal.
Amazon warehouses at 12555 Flatlands Avenue and 12595 Flatlands Avenue (March Associates Construction)
Amazon Logistics inked a deal to lease the 211,000-square-foot Brooklyn Logistics Center in 2020. The adjacent warehouses at 12555 Flatlands Avenue and 12595 Flatlands Avenue occupy two full blocks. The Observer reported Amazon began making tenant improvements to the logistics center while working on the lease with Wildflower, which bought the warehouses for $23.5 million in 2019.
Wildflower, run by Adam Gordon, is remaining a player in New York’s e-commerce space as one of Amazon’s leading partners in the area, but the firm is backing out of the self storage sector.
Last month, Wildflower sold a 3,300-unit facility it built at 3350 Park Avenue in the Morrisania section of the Bronx to Atlanta-based operator Storage Post for $65 million; The developer bought the property in 2017 for $9 million.
Wildflower is also keeping busy in the film studio space, recently receiving approval to begin construction on a 775,000-square-foot production studio in Astoria. The $600 million studio is backed by Hollywood star Robert De Niro, along with Wildflower and producer Jane Rosenthal.
CBRE Investment Management, an independently operated affiliate of CBRE, has shown interest in the New York industrial market in recent months. Earlier this year, it teamed up with O’Connor Capital Partners to buy a Sunset Park warehouse for $85 million. ASB Real Estate Investments and 60 Guilders sold the 200,000-square-foot warehouse at 5112 Second Avenue.
Industrial real estate is a hot property sector for investors, as asking rents were up 8 percent nationally last year, according to Savills. The vacancy rate nationwide was only 4.4 percent at year’s end.
[CO] — Holden Walter-Warner
