LWP Buys Land for $35M Distribution Center

SHAKOPEE, MN-Opus Development Corp. has shed more than half of about 75 acres it owns here, selling 45 acres to Lake Washington Partners.  The buyer will build a 580,000-square-foot distribution center for SanMar, an apparel manufacturer, in a reported $35 million investment, which is rather a large building for the area’s industrial market.

Tony Phelps, senior director of development at Opus, tells GlobeSt.com that his firm completed a few industrial projects at its land at Canterbury Road and Fourth Avenue, and decided to sell off the rest. Phelps represented his firm in the reported $5.3 million sale, and Cassidy Turley represented Sanmar. A spokeswoman for SanMar did not return a call for comment for this story.

Phelps says that the buyer’s project will be a Midwest distribution hub. “The closest other distribution facility they have is in Cincinnati, and that doesn’t really handle the west-of-Chicago market,” he says. This location is about 15 miles south of Minneapolis.

The local market isn’t used to such a large project, Phelps says. “If we see a 300,000-square-foot user, that’s substantial here,” he says. However, he says there’s been other examples of companies coming in during the past few years to create regional distribution hubs, buying up land, such as Medline’s purchase of 20 acres for a 300,000-square-foot center at Liberty Industrial Park in Diamond Lake, MN.

“The Shakopee market is tight, overall,” Phelps says. “If you’re a user looking for 100,000 square feet or more, your universe is probably two-or-three buildings. There’s plenty of opportunity if you’re looking for 20,000 square feet, but there’s just not the large, one-million-square-foot properties in this market, those usually go down into Wisconsin or Chicago.”