NY Investor Pays $23.5M for Former GM Facility in Bristol

BRISTOL, CT-Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Brokerage Co. reports it has brokered the sale of the Bristol Business Center, a 1,162,167-sf facility that was originally built to house manufacturing operations for General Motors.

Mitchell R. LaBar, senior vice president and managing director of Marcus & Millichap’s Northeast offices, says the industrial and warehouse property at 780 James P. Casey Rd. here was sold by a New York-based seller to Savanna Partners Corp., a New York-based investment group, for $23.5 million.

Ben Sgambati, an investment specialist in Marcus & Millichap’s Fort Lee, NJ, office, secured the exclusive listing and marketed the property. The $23.5 million sale price represented $20 per sf.

Bristol Business Center was constructed in 1968 as a GM facility and was used as a ball bearing manufacturing plant by the automaker for nearly 20 years when it was shut down in the late 1990s, Sgambati says. The building totals 27 acres under one roof, which makes the property one of the largest industrial structures on the East Coast.

The center is currently 61% occupied with three tenants leasing a total of 693,617 sf: Firestone Building Products currently occupies approximately 401,000 sf; Arett Sales Corp., leases around 227,000 sf and MDF Systems Inc., has operations in about 65,000 sf of space. The 469,000 sf of vacant space at the building provided a significant value-added opportunity for the buyer, according to Sgambati.

The seller upon acquiring the property from GM had raised ceiling heights that transformed the property from a single use facility into a building suited for industrial and or distribution use, Sgambati adds. The building is located on a 182-acre site and is also serviced by the Boston & Maine Railroad.