Funds managed by Crow Holdings Capital, the real estate investment management arm of Crow Holdings, sold an eight-property industrial portfolio comprised of 15 buildings and totaling 4.7 million square feet of space to PGIM Real Estate. The portfolio traded for a reported $425 million. This sale represents one of the largest portfolios of industrial assets to sell during the COVID-19 pandemic. The properties are located in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro as well as other key U.S. markets including Atlanta, Denver and Phoenix. Across the portfolio, leased occupancy improved three-fold during the sale process. Tenants include an array of national retail chains and corporations. “This transaction demonstrates Crow Holdings’ longstanding expertise and leadership in the industrial asset class across our broad real estate investment management and development companies,” said Michael Levy, chief executive officer of Crow Holdings. “Increased e-commerce sales and the post-pandemic focus on domestic onshoring and deeper inventory levels all point to a positive long-term outlook for industrial real estate.” “Our team constructed this portfolio of state-of-the-art industrial properties in key markets with immediate access to critical infrastructure to be attractive to both institutional buyers and high-quality tenants,” said Bob McClain, chief executive officer of Crow Holdings Capital. “We take great pride in our ability to construct, lease and monetize such an impressive collection of industrial assets during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Wildly popular dining and pickleball venue opening in 2021 Grand Prairie, Tx.​ – Chicken N Pickle, the unique, indoor/outdoor entertainment complex including a casual, chef-driven restaurant and sports bar that boasts pickleball courts, shuffleboard, and a variety of yard games, is set to open ​near the 2900 block of Esplanade, adjacent to the service road along President George Bush Turnpike,​ in 2021. Chicken N Pickle is the world’s premier pickleball restaurant and entertainment brand, which opened its flagship location in North Kansas City in 2017. It soon followed with a location in Wichita, Kansas, where a nationally recognized pro invitational tournament was held in 2019, its opening year. A third location opened in San Antonio in 2020. The concept is set to open in Oklahoma City in late 2020 and in Overland Park, Kansas, in 2021. As host to tournaments, as well as local family fun and games, the Chicken N Pickle name has become synonymous with fun, food and friendship. “We are delighted with the public-private partnership agreement that we are developing with Grand Prairie and are excited to bring Chicken N Pickle to the community,” said Dave Johnson, company founder and principal investor in the brand. “We know people will enjoy our delicious, wood-fired rotisserie chicken, a cold beverage, and some friendly competition on the pickleball courts,’ said Johnson. Bill Crooks, an acclaimed restaurateur, collaborated with Johnson to create the Chicken N Pickle concept. “We have been thrilled by the popularity of Chicken N Pickle and we look forward to making new friends in Grand Prairie,” said Crooks. “Our experience combines good food and good friends for great fun. We are proud to bring our chef-driven menu, featuring clean, locally sourced food and family-oriented activities, to the south,” added Crooks. Chicken N Pickle Grand Prairie will feature indoor and outdoor pickleball courts, lawn games, a rooftop bar and a full-service restaurant using locally sourced foods to offer a variety of delicious dishes. When completed, Chicken N Pickle Grand Prairie will begin hosting pickleball clinics for players at all levels, as well as professional and amateur pickleball tournaments. The Grand Prairie location anticipates bringing hundreds of jobs to the area and will be posting open positions in early 2021. On the menu, a range of delicious rotisserie chicken dishes will be available to please every palate, along with pork and grass-fed beef sandwiches, salads, and a variety of munchies, including Chicken N Pickle’s signature hand-cut fries and tots. Beer from local breweries will be on tap.
“We proudly source from local farmers, ranchers and artisans such as Beeler’s Pure Pork and Heartbrand Beef to bring our customers the freshest, most flavorful, additive-free food possible,” said Alex Staab, Director of Culinary. Pickleball, the fastest growing sport in America, is most popularly played as doubles (2v2) on a court half the size of a tennis court with an oversized ping pong paddle and a ball similar to a wiffle ball. The rules are a mix of tennis and ping pong and are easy and fun for all ages to play together. The company is pursuing a joint venture with the City of Grand Prairie wherein the city will own the land, develop parking needs, and lease to Chicken N Pickle for this use. “We are so excited that Chicken N Pickle has selected Grand Prairie as the site of its sixth location nationally,” said Ron Jensen, mayor of Grand Prairie. “We have so many residents who are ready to play pickleball and eat chicken, some of whom serve on the City Council with me. This is a wonderful addition to our dynamically developing Epic Central project, which already includes Epic Waters, The Epic, The Summit and PlayGrand Adventures and will include hotels, more restaurants and retail,” added Jensen.
About Chicken N Pickle
Chicken N Pickle is a unique, indoor/outdoor entertainment complex including a casual, chef-driven restaurant and sports bar that boasts pickleball courts and indoor/outdoor games for all ages. Its mission is to provide an atmosphere that fosters fun, friendship, and community. A key tenet of Chicken N Pickle is demonstrated through the ​Our Hearts Are Local ​ program, which focuses on creating philanthropic partnerships to strengthen our neighborhoods and beyond. Dozens of charitable events are held annually and proceeds are donated back to the communities we serve.
Good Food. Good Friends. Great Fun. For more information, please visit www.chickennpickle.com

Millennium Packaging LP has claimed the 21,840-square-foot balance of first-generation shell space in Mountain Creek Business Park’s Building 7 in southeast Dallas County. The Midwest-based firm has relocated to 4940 N. Merrifield Road, Dallas, from Grand Prairie, leasing 20 percent of an owner-occupied building in the Red Bird/Airport Industrial Park submarket. The vacancy was on the market for two months. “It’s hard to find brand-new dead storage space in that size range in any submarket of Dallas-Fort Worth. We had a lot of interest in this vacancy,” said Jason Finch, broker associate of Dallas-based Bradford Commercial Real Estate Services. Finch and Michael W. Spain, executive vice president and managing partner, represented the landlord, HPA Real Estate LP. Elizabeth Jones and Chris Stout of JLL represented the tenant in the lease negotiations. Key to the signing was the lease term, which was two years. The landlord’s affiliate, Desch Service Center USA LP, occupies 80 percent of the 54,600-square-foot building and has dibs on the space for future expansion. “Dead-storage space typically is leased month-to-month or up to six months. A two-year term is not a typical lease for this category,” Finch said. “I expected lease-up would have taken longer than it did.” Not only did the short term suit Millennium’s needs, but so did the landlord’s plan to keep the space in shell condition. The class A project, featuring a 32-foot clear height, was completed in 2018. HPA purchased the tilt-wall building shortly after it delivered for Desch, an electronic equipment repair service for the oil and gas industry. “The dealmakers were the flexible lease term, clear height and the extremely clean condition,” Finch said.

Don’t look now, but some sectors in some markets aren’t just weathering COVID-19, they’re settling in for years of growth. Consider the DFW market where, during the first half of 2020, more than 8.2 million square feet of industrial space was absorbed. This data, which was culled from recent CBRE research, held close to the year-over-year absorption of 8.7 million square feet that the area experienced in 2019. While the pandemic is causing disruptions in sectors and markets throughout the country, the DFW industrial market appears to be quite healthy. CBRE tracked 71 transactions of 100,000 square feet or larger that closed during the first two quarters. Half of these, comprising 12.6 million square feet, were new leases, with 5 million square feet of that going under contract during Q2 as the pandemic was well under way. Steve Trese, senior vice president with CBRE in Dallas, believes that supply and demand are still fairly in balance across the metro. This holds true both for industrial product in general and for large logistical warehouses. “Smaller, front-park, rear-load product is flying off the shelf in infill areas. Partly because of the lack of quality sites, developers are capitalizing on challenging small land, and getting higher rents than ever before,” Trese said. “Big box is equally successful, but is venturing out farther than our more traditionally tracked submarkets, seeking quality labor, less congested infrastructure and slightly more affordable land basis.” According to Trese, this migration is leading to cheaper rent via developer yield. That said, location is still key; the cost of real estate is less of a concern when compared to optimal distribution position and deployment. As location is so paramount, where are developers, investors and users focusing their efforts? DFW Airport, Great Southwest/Arlington and most of Northwest Dallas are effectively built out and have little availability. Northeast Dallas is an established market and is very stable, but it’s much more of a localized submarket with smaller tenants. A lot of new activity is occurring in the area’s southern submarkets. “Fort Worth was the new frontier and is now very desirable. Alliance has always been a destination, thanks to developer Hillwood, but South Fort Worth has recently become a land grab area, and the best sites are now spoken for,” said Trese. “We expect the growth to continue to trend south. South Dallas had a glut of big box spec vacancy, which concerned everyone in the know, but was quickly corrected with recent absorption.” FedEx was the source of one of those major South Dallas deals as the shipping giant took the entirety of Trammell Crow Company’s first phase at Cedardale Distribution Center. The 776,630-square-foot cross-docked distribution center features 130 dock doors and 234 parking spots. Trammell Crow cited the property’s location, directly south of I-20 between I-35 and I-45, as a strategic opportunity for growth over the next two decades due to relatively inexpensive land and easy access to transportation lines. Nearby, an undisclosed tenant recently inked a deal for 610,806 square feet at I-35 Logistics Crossing, leasing all of the site’s Building A. Located at 2801 N. Houston School Road in Lancaster and marketed by Cushman & Wakefield, this development of Crow Holdings includes 36-foot clear heights, 185-foot truck courts and trailer storage. The tenant plans to conduct a $12 million build-out before moving in by the end of this summer. In South Fort Worth, packaging firm Ball Corp. agreed to occupy 678,000 square feet of space at Majestic Realty’s Majestic Fort Worth South. The 320-acre master-planned business park, which will comprise 1.8 million square feet of rentable space when the first phase is completed, has direct access to I-35 with freeway frontage opportunities available. There was a spate of spec development leading up to the pandemic and approximately 20 percent of industrial space now under construction in the DFW metro has been preleased. According to Trese, he sees little reason to worry about filling this new product. “We have had more new spec development deal activity during the shutdown than the previous 24 months,” Trese said. “Market fundamentals before the pandemic were pushing users to migrate to our region, and it has only accelerated with the conditional forces at hand.” The pandemic has given a boost to the already accelerating e-commerce and logistics sector as stay-at-home orders have turned online shopping late adopters into converts. Other benefactors are the possible onshoring of manufacturing jobs as businesses flee China and the stockpiling of health-related materials. “Multiple big e-commerce deals have landed here versus other markets,” said Trese, “but the organic growth of small industrial business gives me the most confidence that we are in the right asset class of real estate and in the right part of the country for this snapshot in time.” Industrial net absorption is very predictably tied to job growth. As DFW was the fastest-growing metro over the past decade, industrial absorption follows suit. Job creation has come to a halt, however, as COVID-19 causes companies to stall or cease operations. While the immediate reality may seem grim, Trese has confidence in the future. “We have obviously lost a ton of jobs globally, nationally and locally, but we are forecasting some of the strongest industrial metrics over the next couple years that we’ve ever seen in North Texas,” said Trese. “Because of the paradigm shift on consumer spending, onshoring and new American manufacturing—as well as the fact that the state of Texas has demonstrated a pro-business attitude—the mold has been shattered.”

Stream Realty Partners recently closed on four transactions in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro. The three leases and one sale concerned industrial properties located in Plano, Dallas, Fort Worth and Grand Prairie, Texas. Maxdao Inc. leased 11,792 square feet at Jupiter Business Park – Building 5, located at 2532 Summit Avenue in Plano. Ryan Wolcott and James Mantzuranis with Stream Realty Partners represented the landlord, Ranger DRA Advisors. Sunet Group represented the tenant. All-Tex Supply, Inc. renewed its 31,105-square-foot lease at Manana 35 Business Center, 10790-10804 N. Stemmons Freeway in Dallas. Drew Feagin and Todd Poticny with Stream Realty Partners represented the landlord, Ranger D-TX LP. Ryan Boozer and Lena Pierce with Stream Realty Partners represented the tenant. Carrier Enterprise, LLC extended 66,721 square feet at Parc North – Building 4, located at 5051 N. Sylvania Avenue in Fort Worth. Brett Carlton, Forrest Cook, and Seth Koschak with Stream Realty Partners represented the landlord, EastGroup Properties, L.P. CBRE represented the tenant. Finally, Freight Operations Services, LLC purchased a 2,700-square-feet industrial building at 2725 West Hunter Ferrell Road, Grand Prairie. SLG Commercial represented the buyer. Hanes Chatham with Stream Realty Partners represented the seller, J2K Property Management Investments, Inc.