14 DC VELOCITY APRIL 2019 www.dcvelocity.com
newsworthy
E-commerce, logistics firms dominate large warehouse
deals in 2018
E-commerce and logistics companies are claiming a
growing share of the country’s largest warehouse leases,
underscoring the rising influence of those companies on
U.S. warehouse construction, according to a study by Los
Angeles-based real-estate services firm CBRE Group Inc.
CBRE’s analysis of last year’s industrial-leasing activity
in the U.S. found that 61 of the 100 largest warehouse
leases were signed by e-commerce companies and logis-
tics firms, for a total of 61.5
million square feet. Those
numbers were up from the
previous year, when the two
sectors signed 52 of the 100
largest leases for a cumulative
43. 2 million square feet of
space, CBRE said. The trend is
expected to continue in 2019,
as e-commerce and logistics
players maintain an outsized
appetite for large warehouse
leases relative to companies
in the manufacturing, food and beverage, and technology
sectors, the report showed.
Irrespective of industry, the largest industrial leases got
even bigger last year, CBRE said. The top 100 leases in
2018 totaled 19 percent more space than the top 100 of
2017. Fifty of the 100 deals signed in 2018 were for warehouses of 970,000 square feet or more.
The mega-leases were spread across 32 markets, with
many clustered in leading logistics hubs like California’s
Inland Empire ( 20 leases), Pennsylvania’s I-78/I-81 cor-
ridor ( 11), Dallas-Fort Worth ( 10), Atlanta (nine), and
Chicago (five), CBRE said. Additional large leases were
signed in Columbus (four), Detroit (four), and St. Louis
(three).
“These are among the leading markets that offer the
high-quality logistics facilities that many of these e-com-
merce users are seeking,” Chris Zubel, CBRE’s Americas
industrial and logistics investor leader, said in a release.
“This activity builds upon
itself when a region provides
the transportation access,
qualified labor pool, and
state-of-the-art real estate
that many e-commerce users
need.”
But transportation, labor,
and amenities aren’t the only
factors prospective lessees
need to consider. In choos-
ing their sites, e-commerce
companies also need to strike
a balance between open rural spaces and proximity to
urban consumers, said Lior Elazary, CEO and co-founder
of warehouse automation vendor inVia Robotics Inc.
“Companies have been setting up warehouses closer to
where people live,” but not in densely developed cities,
Elazary said in an interview. “They can’t set up a 1. 2 mil-lion-square-foot warehouse in a city, but they also can’t
set it up out in the country, because then it’s more than an
hour away and they can’t provide same-day shipping.”
—Ben Ames
In response to growing customer demand, aerospace
logistics specialist B&H Worldwide has moved its East
Coast operation to a larger facility in Miami. The move
will allow the company to triple its available ware-
house capacity. … TVH in the Americas, a provider
of replacement parts and accessories for the material
handling and equipment industries, has opened a new
50,000-square-foot distribution center in Portland,
Ore. … Aircargo handler Worldwide Flight Services
has started construction on a state-of-the-art phar-
ma facility at Copenhagen Airport in Denmark. The
new 16,000-square-foot building will provide a tem-
perature-controlled environment for the end-to-end
handling of pharma products. … In the final quarter
of 2018, Prism Logistics opened a third warehouse
logistics facility in Stockton, Calif., bringing the 3PL’s
total square footage to 1. 4 million square feet in
seven facilities throughout the state. … Interstate
Warehousing, a public refrigerated warehouse compa-
ny, is expanding its Murfreesboro, Tenn., cold storage
distribution center once again. The latest expansion,
which will add another 115,000 square feet and 16,000
pallet positions to the facility, will bring the DC’s total
size to more than 500,000 square feet.
ground breakers
