"Our business plan has now been completed and so we felt it an appropriate time to sell," says Gary M. Sumers, Blackstone's senior managing director. Blackstone had owned MD Hodges since November 1999.
The space is in major submarkets across the Atlanta metro area and includes two large parcels of developable land totaling about 400 acres. The assets also include an industrial investment in Nashville. The average occupancy rate exceeds 90%.
The acquisition is a strategic expansion of ING's industrial-focused $18-billion Lion Industrial Trust With the addition of the Hodges portfolio, LIT owns more than 50 million sf of industrial/distribution properties across the nation. "With this acquisition, we are creating a critical mass of industrial space in one of the most important and dynamic areas of the country," says John Thomas, chief operating officer of Lion Industrial Trust.
MD Hodges will continue to operate under its name with the senior operating teams in place, working with Dallas-based ING Clarion Industrial Group. As part of the transaction, Jeffrey Small, Jr., president and CEO of MD Hodges, is forming a new venture, MDH Partners. The new firm's first assignment will be to provide strategic oversight of one of the parcels--the Huntcrest development project.
ING Clarion and its affiliates manage $18.5 billion in assets in the private equity, public equity and public debt sectors of the real estate markets. It is the US real estate management affiliate of the ING Group, which has more than $630 billion in global assets under management including $64 billion of real estate assets.
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