BALTIMORE, MD—Principal Real Estate Investors has acquired a 241,457-square foot warehouse in Howard County's Baltimore Washington Industrial Park for $26.7 million, or $100 per square foot. The seller is a joint venture between Chesapeake Real Estate Group and Atapco Properties.

The building, located at 8235 Patuxent Range Rd. in Jessup is 80% leased to FELD Entertainment. Mark Glagola of Transwestern represented the seller in this transaction and Principal was self-represented.

  Chesapeake Real Estate Group acquired the building from Owens Corning in 2008. Up to that point it had served as an asphalt-roof shingle manufacturing facility until it closed in 2007. Chesapeake leased the property to ULMA Form Works for the next five years, and then formed a joint venture partnership with Atapco to re-develop the project on spec into an institutional-quality distribution facility.

The original building was demolished and the site concrete crushed on-site and used as base material to construct the new cross-dock facility, which is expected to be LEED-certified by March 2015. The building features 32 foot clear ceiling heights, an 8,500 square foot office mezzanine, 75 docks and 30 trailer drops.

FELD Entertainment will use the building to consolidate and expand its presence in Howard County at this facility.

There are strong drivers to develop spec industrial in Howard County now, says Matt Laraway, executive vice president and partner of Chesapeake Real Estate Group. "High quality industrial and warehouse product such as this one is becoming increasingly sparse in the Baltimore-Washington, D.C. market," he says.

Also, "the strong labor market, proximity to a port location and expanding demographics have positioned this area as extremely attractive and viable for large warehouse requirements."