Prologis Inc. snaps up warehouses

Denver-based industrial-property owner and management company Prologis Inc. invested about $19 million in Phoenix-area warehouse and distribution-center properties in August, expanding its local footprint to more than 3 million square feet.

Prologis closed this week on a 302,640-square-foot warehouse and distribution center in Tolleson for about $10 million, according to commercial real-estate-services company Jones Lang LaSalle in Phoenix, which brokered the deal.

Prologis, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "PLD," had purchased a 250,800-square-foot warehouse property in southwest Phoenix for about $9 million in mid-August, according to Anthony Lydon, managing director at Jones Lang LaSalle.

Lydon and Marc Hertzberg, also a Jones Lang LaSalle managing director, represented the seller, the Paul and Eleanor Sade Trust of Alamo, Calif., in the most recent transaction.

The two acquisitions expanded Prologis' Phoenix-area presence by about 20 percent, Lydon said, from about 2.5 million square feet to more than 3 million square feet.

Several Fortune 500 companies have been eyeing the Phoenix area for distribution and fulfillment centers this year, particularly the West Valley, according to local economic-development officials.

Amazon.com, Gap.com and Macys.com all operate warehouse and distribution centers in the West Valley, and Target.com has a similar facility on the western side of the Tucson metro area.

The intense interest in Arizona as a hub for the distribution of goods purchased online is due in part to the state's policy of not pressuring online retailers to collect state sales tax.

The state Legislature has opted instead to require consumers to keep track of their e-commerce purchases and pay a use tax on those goods when they file their income-tax returns.

In the first quarter, Macys.com purchased vacant land to expand its existing 600,000-square-foot warehouse in Goodyear.

Several area real-estate brokers also have said the Home Shopping Network is seeking the appropriate site to build its own Phoenix-area warehouse facility of between 1 million and 1.5 million square feet.

Nearly all consumer goods shipped to the southwestern U.S. from Asia arrive via ship at either of two ports, Los Angeles or Long Beach, Calif.

From there, goods are transported by truck to regional distribution centers, where they are stored until a customer orders the products online.

Therefore, it saves both time and fuel costs to place the distribution centers as close as possible to the West Coast, analysts say.

The West Valley also is close enough to Southern California's major consumer markets that delivery trucks can deliver products to those consumers in a single day.

by J. Craig Anderson The Arizona Republic Sept. 1, 2011 12:00 AM




Prologis Inc. snaps up warehouses