CHICAGO—It's well-known that the industrial real estate, especially in the Chicago metro area, has shown tremendous strength. And the current boom, fueled by both the overall economy and the remarkable expansion of e-commerce, looks like it's going to last longer than past expansions. And that rosy outlook is helping pull more commercial real estate professionals into the industrial sector.
Next Realty, Inc. a Skokie, IL-based investment firm, has decided to expand its reach and focus by hiring industrial specialist R. Tyler Hardy as director of acquisitions. Internet competition has already caused the company to adjust how it runs its many retail properties. Next now has a special focus on bringing in tenants that provide services, such as nail salons or healthcare users, that immunize their centers from competition with e-commerce. But with Hardy on board, the company can take a direct role in a sector with so much promise.
“It's adding a running game to a good passing game,” Andy Hochberg, chief executive officer of Next, tells GlobeSt.com. It's also a way to keep up with the many changes still going on. “Customers are already shopping differently, but I believe there are permutations yet to come.”
Distributors are still experimenting with how to build and locate new “last-mile” facilities, for example, as customers keep demanding ever faster deliveries. And Hochberg believes that in the near future big retailers may establish their own fulfillment centers, bringing even more change to the world of retail. “It's our goal as much as possible to blend retail and industrial opportunities.”
But the company's work in the industrial sector will for now be what Hochberg calls a “nuts-and-bolts” operation. Next will mostly focus on investments of up to $30 million in small cap, single and multi-tenant properties, especially ones in traditional locations in IL, IN, and WI, where the company has many retail properties. Other rising markets such as Nashville, where Next also has retail, are also on its radar screen.
Hardy has spent the past 16 years focused on acquisitions, dispositions, leasing and tenant-representation in Chicago and on a national level. In his new role, he will spearhead the firm's industrial acquisition strategy. Prior to joining Next Realty, Hardy was a managing director at Savills Studley in Chicago, where he focused on the disposition of assets no longer deemed essential to operations of institutional grade industrial real estate portfolios, corporate occupier-owned redundant facilities, and local and Midwest industrial buildings.
Hochberg calls this hire “a logical next step in the ongoing progression and diversification of Next Realty.”
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Brian J. Rogal
Brian J. Rogal is a Chicago-based freelance writer with years of experience as an investigative reporter and editor, most notably at The Chicago Reporter, where he concentrated on housing issues. He also has written extensively on alternative energy and the payments card industry for national trade publications.
