Bay Area Logistics Market Has Special Appeal for CenterPoint

RICHMOND, CA—LDK Ventures acquired the 42-acre brownfield site at 2995 Atlas Rd. in 2014 and completed construction on the Bay Area Logistics Center in 2018. CenterPoint Properties recently purchased the 707,820-square-foot facility from LDK Ventures.

Amazon leased the entire class-A building back in May. The facility was the largest spec building in the Bay Area when it was constructed and this is the largest logistics transaction year to date, GlobeSt.com learns.

The Bay Area Logistics Center has a 32-foot clear-height, 151 dock-high doors and 157 trailer parking stalls. It has a bay depth of 475 feet and a truck court depth ranging from 130 to 180 feet. The logistics facility is adjacent to a UPS hub, near the Port of Oakland and just 2.4 miles to the Interstate 80 Richmond Parkway Interchange.

“The building was deliberately designed for high throughput, volume and last-mile delivery to the Greater Bay Area, and engineered to serve the local population,” Greg Pearson, vice president of investments with CenterPoint, tells GlobeSt.com. “The inventory here has a much quicker turnover as opposed to buildings out in Tracy and Stockton where there is more land for deeper buildings.”

Pearson says there are only 10 sites readily available from Richmond to Newark, CA.

“The overarching reason for buying this big bulk building in an infill setting was to achieve a certain scale that is not readily available,” he tells GlobeSt.com. “The scale of the building cannot be replicated and is intrinsically valuable because of that.”

Although CenterPoint’s focus stretches from Seattle to Los Angeles, the Bay Area has been a particular focus for the past two years.

“We intentionally focused on the Bay Area market 24 months ago because we like the demographics, and have been especially active the past 18 months,” Pearson tells GlobeSt.com. “The Bay Area has been historically difficult to penetrate so this demonstrates the culmination of our prolific history during that time. We started out with 15,000 square feet back then, going up to 700,000 square feet with a lot of size ranges in between, so it’s been a meaningful 24 months for us.”

The sale was facilitated by the Cushman & Wakefield Northern California capital markets team, led by Steve Hermann. The Cushman & Wakefield leasing team consisting of John McManus, Brooks Pedder and Tony Binswanger were responsible for the leasing the asset.

“We saw a great deal of potential in the site as a last-mile solution for large-scale distribution companies,” said Denton Kelley, Principal of LDK Ventures. “We’re pleased that CenterPoint recognizes the value that this facility holds for its West Coast portfolio.”

The Bay Area Logistics Center is one of several LDK Ventures developments in California. The closest neighboring development is the North Bay Logistics Center in Vacaville. That project’s first phase of 840,000 square feet is fully leased to two tenants. The project’s second phase features a 617,000-square-foot class-A distribution center that is fully leased (on a build-to-suit basis) to a credit tenant.