MINNEAPOLIS-Milestone AV Technologies has just signed a three-year lease on a 106,000-square-foot warehouse owned by Virginia Retirement Systems in Shakopee, MN, a town about 23 miles southwest of Minneapolis.
“It's a smaller footprint than they were paying on,” Dave Paradise, senior director of Cushman & Wakefield/NorthMarq, told GlobeSt.com. He represented VRS and TA Associates Realty, their adviser, in the transaction. Milestone will move its Twin Cities' bulk distribution operation from an approximately 140,000-square-foot building in nearby Roseville to Shakopee this September.
Paradise won't disclose details about the lease but did say Milestone, a Minnesota-based distributor of consumer electronics such as home-theater equipment with offices worldwide, will probably pay less per square foot in their new building. It has a 32-foot clearance, about eight feet higher than their present location, and this will allow them to increase their operational efficiency by stacking more goods in a smaller space.
Sydney Johnson, a director of C&W/NorthMarq, also helped represent TA Associates, and Milestone was represented by Bill Ritter, a senior vice president of Colliers International.
The demand for large industrial and warehouse spaces in the Twin Cities' southwest region seems quite steady, Paradise adds. “This was one of the last distribution buildings in the 100,000-square-foot range that was available down there,” he says.
Companies looking to locate similar operations in the areas north and southeast of the two cities will find things a bit looser, but Shakopee has very few options, and whatever's open gets snapped up. For example, Milestone's new home is currently occupied by SanMar, a clothing distribution company, and they won't vacate until this summer. “There's really no down time,” Paradise concludes.
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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.
