Hartz Mountain Industries Inc. President Gus Milano said Aug. 11 the company’s $148 million purchase of five industrial properties in Jacksonville is the first, but not necessarily the last, time it will invest in Northeast Florida.
“If the right opportunity arises, we certainly would,” Milano said.
“We like Jacksonville.”
He referred to the area’s growth and the expanding port business, factors conducive to the industrial real estate industry.
New Jersey-based Hartz Mountain Industries, a private investment company, bought five buildings totaling 1.371 million square feet of space Aug. 10.
Milano said the warehouses, comprising four in Westside Industrial Park and one in EastPark, are 96% leased. Hartz refers to them as the Jacksonville Core Industrial Portfolio.
The Westside Industrial Park and EastPark properties were built from 1993 through 2017.
“The properties are in very good condition and at this time, there is no need or requirement to make any significant upgrade to the assets,” he said.
Milano, also Hartz’s COO, said the properties fit the company’s focus: A large portfolio with multiple buildings and diverse tenants.
“This fit our investment criteria very well,” he said.
Milano said Hartz owns about 35 million square feet of industrial space, including properties it built in the 1970s. The Jacksonville portfolio could be a long-term hold.
“Our hold time is indefinite,” he said. “Seldom do we sell industrial assets.”
He said Hartz has no intention “at this time” to dispose of the assets.
Hartz buys industrial land; infill buildings, preferably multitenant, of all ages; and redevelopment opportunities. “Pretty much across the board,” Milano said.
Hartzmountain.com says the company, based in Secaucus, New Jersey, is a private owner of commercial real estate. It has additional offices in New York City.
It says it has grown from a small startup in 1966 to a large regional real estate enterprise that owns and operates a portfolio of more than 260 properties primarily in major East Coast markets, including New York, New Jersey, Atlanta, Charlotte, Maryland and Chicago.
Hartz says its portfolio comprises more than 45 million square feet of residential, office, hotel and industrial properties.
Milano said Hartz has a long relationship with the Cushman & Wakefield real estate company, which represented the portfolio owner and presented the investment opportunity to his team.
Cushman & Wakefield announced Aug. 11 that it arranged the sale.
The company said in a news release that Mike Davis, Rick Brugge, Rick Colon and Dominic Montazemi, with support from Zach Eicholtz and Chloe Strada, represented the seller, in the transaction.
Tyler Newman and Jacob Horsley of Cushman & Wakefield in Jacksonville assisted in the sale and have been retained to lease the portfolio on behalf of the buyer, the release said.
Milano said Hartz has a team that represented the purchase.
“It’s a huge deal for Jacksonville, for a lot of reasons,” Davis said in an interview after issuing the release.
Davis is vice chair of Cushman & Wakefield in Tampa.
“It shows that we had really robust interest and it shows there is strong institutional interest in the Jacksonville market and that this is largely driven by several years now of increased tenant demand for industrial real estate.”
Milano said Hartz has assets along the East Coast from West Palm Beach through Atlanta, South Carolina, North Carolina and Maryland. The Jacksonville investment is a continuation of that.
Link Logistics Real Estate LLC of New York City sold the properties through LLCs formed under the Colfin name.
The recorded deeds show that Hartz Mountain Industries bought:
• Westside Industrial Park properties at 4601-100 Bulls Bay Highway, 4601-200 Bulls Bay Highway and 4601-300 Bulls Bay Highway for $130.6 million. Those total about 1.15 million square feet of space.
• A Westside Industrial Park property at 4910 Bulls Bay Highway for $12.7 million. That property is a 120,701-square-foot warehouse.
• An EastPark property at 11902 Central Parkway for $4.7 million. The property is an 86,330-square-foot building.
The Colfin LLCs bought the four Westside properties in 2018 for $77.5 million and the EastPark property in 2017 for $6.1 million.
