Benaroya Unloads Industrial Portfolio for $81M

SEATTLE-Almost 20 years after his father did the same thing, Larry Benaroya has unloaded the family’s Kent Valley industrial portfolio. In a transaction that closed Dec. 30, the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association College Retirement Equities Fund paid the family $81.04 million for 1.53 million sf in seven buildings in the neighboring cities of Kent and Auburn.

Larry Benaroya and family built up the portfolio over the past seven years after coming off the bench after the termination of a non-compete clause that kicked in when his father, Jack, a dominant warehouse builder in the 1970s and early 1980s, sold off a similar sized portfolio in the mid-1980s, avoiding one of the industry’s worst recession in decades.

Bob Watson of Seattle-based R.M. Watson Co., the broker who brought the parties together, tells GlobeSt.com the sale is one of the largest real estate transactions in the Pacific Northwest in several years. “The Benaroya industrial properties represented an excellent opportunity for TIAA-CREF to acquire newer quality distribution warehouse properties in bulk, making it a meaningful addition to their core real estate portfolio,” he says. “They had money to place and needed product that would compete for the long term, and this gives them enough volume to be a player.”