Owens' Surplus Property Gets New Role

HOUSTON-Surplus property of a top-name sausage maker will be converted into a used vehicle dealership. The sale is indicative of the high demand in the market for smaller, end-user properties.

Owens Country Sausage Inc. has hawked its 7,512-sf building, positioned on 47,725 sf of land, to Fredis A. Romero. Broker Sam Sheff of the Houston office of Grubb & Ellis Co. isn’t disclosing the selling price, but Owens was seeking $300,00 for the holding at 9522 Interstate 45 North.

“End user transactions are still going strong,” Sheff tells GlobeSt.com. He says it’s a growing trend building a lot of momentum despite the present slowing market. Sheff represented the seller, Owens Country Sausage Inc. Bill Skinner with Vallone & Associates handled talks for the buyer.

The sale ends nearly 25 years of ownership for Owens. The warehouse distribution building comes with freezers and coolers. Sheff says Owens used the structure to store sausage and other food products hauled in from the main location and corporate headquarters site in Richardson, TX. When product arrived in Houston, route salesmen would pick it up and deliver it to their retail customers. That’s the way things were done in the old days. Today, says Sheff, retail customers like H-E-B, Kroger and other grocers get Owens’ products delivered directly to their warehouses. Consequently, Owens no longer needed the staging area and decided to sell.

According to Sheff, Romero will use the property for a used car dealership. Some vehicles will be housed in the building and others on the lot, which has excellent freeway frontage. As a bonus, there is a truck maintenance area already in place at the rear of the building. That area will be used for vehicle repairs, Sheff says.