By Marc Stiles–Senior Reporter, Puget Sound Business Journal
Photography by: DRONEGENUITY
November 30, 2022
Bellevue-based Lake Washington Partners has staked a claim in one of the nation’s top commercial real estate markets, Dallas.
The family-owned company on Monday said it paid approximately $47 million for a new 418,000-square-foot industrial building, Tradepoint 20/45, which is about 13 miles south of downtown Dallas. The building is vacant but Lake Washington Partners has received “strong interest” in the space,” company President Jordan Lott said in an email. Dallas-Fort Worth is one of the nation’s top-performing commercial real estate markets overall, and the industrial sector leads the nation in construction activity with 62 million square feet, according to JLL. Just over 6% of the market’s 741 million square feet is vacant.
“The fundamentals of the Texas market are strong, with its low vacancy and strong support of the business community,” Lott said.
The acquisition gives Lake Washington Partners over 1.6 million square feet of industrial space in the Dallas area, where Lott said the company is looking at two additional development projects.
He added the company has “aggressive growth plans in both existing and new markets.”
He said the company is “bullish on the industrial market, and beyond what we are doing in Dallas, we are actively looking for new acquisitions and development projects on the Eastern Seaboard.”
Lake Washington Partners owns three industrial assets in the Puget Sound region, according to its website, but doesn’t anticipate growing that portfolio.
Lott said the company “still firmly believe(s) in the market fundamentals and growth of the Seattle area. However, we are focused on other markets at the moment.”
Dallas-based Champion Partners developed Tradepoint 20/45, which was sold this summer to Syosset, New York-based Blumenfeld Development Group, the Dallas Morning News reported. The paper did not report how much Blumenfeld paid for the asset. Dallas-Fort Worth is ranked No. 2 on the top “markets to watch” list in the Urban Land Institute and PwC’s Emerging Trends report for 2023, which based on data and input from over 2,000 experts. Emerging Trends ranks industrial and multifamily housing as the two best sectors. The report, published this fall, noted industrial rent growth in 2022 is on track to break the previous year’s all-time high.