Spartanburg Transaction Yet Again Highlights Strength of SC Manufacturing and Warehouse Facility Market

By Eliza Theiss, Associate Editor

South Carolina sports the strongest growing manufacturing GDP on the East Coast. It should come as no surprise that manufacturing and distribution facilities are a hot asset to be had in the Palmetto State.

One of the most recent manufacturing facility transactions in the state of South Carolina was brokered by Atlanta-headquartered Bull Realty, Inc. The CRE sales and consulting firm brokered the $10.8 million transaction of a 156,800-square-foot manufacturing and distribution facility in Spartanburg County. Bull Realty’s Virginia Wright, CCIM, represented buyer RT Woods Chapel LLC, and affiliate of Chambers Street Properties LLC, a publicly traded net lease industrial and office REIT. Seller ACPS LLC was represented by Greenville, S.C.-based Merritt and Company’s Dick Merritt, CCIM.

The concrete tilt-up style facility is located at 1200 Woods Chapel Road on a 32.5-acre site. Inaugurated in 2009, the property presents the possibility of expanding by 273,000 square feet. It is fully leased on a triple net basis to Lear Operation Corp., a plastic automotive components supplier. It is also in close proximity to I-58, the Greenville-Spartanburg Airport as well as to Greer, S.C., where South Carolina Inland Port is developing a new intermodal facility. The inland port is expected to open by the end of the month.

“In today’s marketplace, investors are hungry for net-leased properties such as 1200 Woods Chapel Road,” said Michael Bull, president and founder of Bull Realty. “These properties typically offer landlords the stability and security of financially strong tenants on long-term leases.” With this acquisition, Chambers Street now owns over 2.1 million square feet of warehouse and distribution assets in the Spartanburg region.

Chambers Street Properties is a net lease industrial and office REIT with a portfolio of 129 assets encompassing 34.2 million rentable square feet, worth $3.3 billion, as of June 2013.

Image courtesy of The Wilbert Group

Chart courtesy of Cushman & Wakefield | Talhimer