Largest Industrial Land Deal YTD Ushers in Mega Park
NorthPoint Development LLC nabbed the site located at US 90 and Uvalde Road where it plans to develop a 2.5 million-square-foot master-planned industrial park called NorthPoint 90 Logistics Center.
HOUSTON—While the acquisition price was undisclosed, an acquisition total of 190 acres points to something big afoot. In what is reportedly the largest industrial land transaction year-to-date, NorthPoint Development LLC nabbed the site located at US 90 and Uvalde Road. The seller was Sowell Equities-Forestwood LP.
NAI Partners’ Michael Keegan, a partner in the firm’s industrial group, represented the seller in the transaction.
“We couldn’t be happier with the results of this sale,” said Sowell Equities’ Jamie Cornelius. “Michael did an outstanding job marketing this property for us. What started as a 337-acre raw land site became a saleable investment opportunity thanks to Michael Keegan and NAI Partners’ efforts in parceling it off and selling the sites to highly qualified users and developers. At the end of the day, we were incredibly pleased to be able to find an outstanding buyer for these 190 acres that will help continue to bolster Houston’s rapidly growing and dynamic distribution sector by transforming the land into a state-of-the-art industrial park.”
NorthPoint Development plans to develop a 2.5 million-square-foot seven-building master-planned industrial park on the site to be called NorthPoint 90 Logistics Center. Colliers International’s Blake Gibson and Ryan Byrd represented NorthPoint Development on the acreage sale and will be marketing the project for lease.
“This was one of the last major desirable and developable contiguous land sites of this size inside the belt,” said Keegan tells GlobeSt.com. “The sale further underscores Houston’s emergence as a major industrial distribution hub.”
Indeed, the record pace of new multi-tenant class-A industrial distribution product coming online every quarter in 2019 is astonishing, according to NAI Partners’ latest industrial report. This has pushed the vacancy rate up around 3 percentage points.
With the rise in population of Houston and the ever-increasing demand for last mile delivery of goods, it is conceivable that Houston’s industrial market will absorb the product as it has always done in the past. How long it will take remains to be seen, NAI Partners ponders.
Industrial land prices continue to rise dramatically as large institutional industrial developers compete for prime sites, especially in areas just inside and outside the entire Beltway 8 corridor. This has translated into rising rental rates for industrial buildings. There are now many infill land areas inside the Beltway 8 and Loop 610 areas, underscoring a transition from industrial to mixed-use developments as the move to urban areas increases, the report says.