Ares Management Fund Acquires 33-Acre Warehouse in Morrisville for $26.9M

by Adriana Pop, Associate Editor

A real estate fund affiliated with Ares Management in Los Angeles has recently purchased the largest warehouse in Wake County, the 33-acre 900 Aviation property in Morrisville.

According to the Triangle Business Journal, Chicago real estate firm Pearlmark Real Estate Partners, formerly known as Transwestern Investment Corp., sold the 580,000-square-foot facility for $26.85 million.

Chris Norvell, Scot Humphrey and Bill Simerville of Cushman & Wakefield/Thalhimer represented the seller in the transaction, the newspaper reports.

Located about one mile from Interstate 40 and about two miles from the Raleigh-Durham International Airport, the property was 93 percent leased at the time of sale.

Durham-based Burt’s Bees skin care products company occupies more than half of the building’s space. Home Comfort Furniture, Recall Total Information Management and McCollister’s Transportation Group are also among the property’s tenants.

In other news, technology company ePlus Inc. has announced it would expand its managed services operations with the opening of a new center in Morrisville. The 12,000 square-foot facility, which is expected to eventually employ 50 new engineers, will be the company’s third managed services center in the U.S. and its largest overall.

“Raleigh is a strategic location for ePlus and holds a tremendous pool of technical talent in the Research Triangle Park area, from which we can grow our staff and broaden our service offering.  In addition, the new Managed Services Center has proximity to many of our key partners, including Cisco and NetApp, which will enable us to expand our service capabilities to joint customers.”

Founded in 1990, the Herndon, Va.-based company has more than 900 employees serving federal, state, municipal and commercial customers nationally. Its other offices are located in Charlotte and Wilmington.

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