EQT Sells Midwest Portfolio for $400M

EQT Real Estate has sold Central Logistics Portfolio, a 20-asset, 4.4 million-square-foot Midwest collection in Kentucky, Ohio, Missouri and Illinois, for some $400 million. The buyers, Almanac Realty Investors and SparrowHawk, funded the acquisition with a $236 million loan issued by PPM America.

JLL Capital Markets advised in the execution of the joint venture’s financing strategy. The five-year note features a fixed-and-floating rate.

Half of the collection by square footage is in St. Louis, while Cincinnati holds approximately one-fifth of the portfolio, The Real Deal reported. Other markets include Cleveland, Columbus, Ohio, Dayton, Ohio, and Louisville, Ky.

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The warehouses came online in 2006 on average and span about 221,000 square feet. They feature 30-foot clear heights, cross-dock and rear-load layouts, as well as truck court depths that range between 115 and 205 feet.

Central Logistics Portfolio was 94 percent leased at closing, its 30-company tenant roster including a mix of national and regional firms operating in logistics, distribution, manufacturing, e-commerce and pharmaceutical industries. SparrowHawk intends to leverage current vacancies and capture future rent growth.

JLL Capital Markets Senior Director Brian Walsh and Managing Director Lucas Borges, together with Senior Managing Director Steve Klein and Director Chris Pratt, in addition to Senior Analysts Emma Berner and Christian Johnston, arranged the financing deal.

Lucrative partnerships

Almanac partnered with SparrowHawk late last year, when it committed $300 million of growth capital. Before closing the EQT deal, which was SparrowHawk’s largest to date, the company had grown its footprint by 1.1 million square feet. The firm’s industrial AUM totals north of $1 billion.

SparrowHawk had made prior deals with Exeter before the firm merged with EQT in 2021. Notably, Exeter acquired a 582,541-square-foot portfolio in Louisville from SparrowHawk in 2017. Nearly a decade later, SparrowHawk and EQT have come full circle, as the latest portfolio transaction includes Louisville assets.

EQT fuels heightened industrial portfolio deal activity

Industrial portfolio sales from $250 million to $750 million and above are the backbone of the industrial investment market, according to prepared remarks by JLL Capital Markets Senior Managing Director John Huguenard. The second half of 2026 is likely to witness heightened activity across this segment as the debt markets are very liquid, with abundant capital from some of the largest commercial lenders, including insurance companies, banks and the credit and debt fund space.

EQT is one of the most active firms that engages in large collection trades. That’s partly due to the nature of its Private Core+ accounts, which are structured in finite-life vehicles that are designed to be sold across portfolio deals once enough value has been accrued at the property level, according to an SEC filing.

In line with this strategy, EQT Real Estate Industrial Core-Plus Fund II has sold two large collections during the last 12 months. In November, the company divested an 8.7 million-square-foot portfolio to Artemis Real Estate Partners in the then-largest transaction of 2025. And this year, EQT sold a 7.3 million-square-foot collection to Ares Real Estate.