The five-year lease signing came full circle in just a matter of days, Casey Borgers, industrial specialists with NAI/Commercial Industrial Properties Co. of Austin, tells GlobeSt.com. "ProLogis knew the space was coming and we were negotiating before it became widely know. It was all good," he says. Even if the search had taken a year, Borgers says a more perfect spot wouldn't have come to market.

"Time was of the essence," Borger explains. Yusen had been subleasing space from a company that has gone belly up, he explains. And, says Borgers, Yusen has snagged double the space for a planned expansion and ProLogis is sporting a 100% occupancy on the 72,000-sf, class-C building. Move-in starts next week.

Borgers and NAI/CIP's Mark Milstead have represented Yusen in the signing. ProLogis has used in-house broker Tom Pardee. Front-load warehouse properties in the north central market are going for 40 cents to 45 cents with triple net expenses.

The Yusen logistics operation is a subsidiary of the 46-year-old Yusen Air & Sea Service Co. Ltd., headquartered in Tokyo. Austin is one of 10 US cities in the company's Western Region. The parent firm also has eight cities in its Midwest Division, 11 on the East Coast and one in Miami to service that section of the country as well as Latin America. In the Tokyo area, it has 32 export and seven import offices.