By Jack Stubbs
On Thursday, May 31st, Denver, Colorado-based DCT Industrial, an industrial real estate company, acquired a roughly 117,800 storage warehouse in Kent for $19.75 million, or approximately $168 per square foot, according to public records filed with Pierce County.
DCT, who did not respond to calls or emails for comment in time for the publishing of this story, acquired the property from Sumner Building LLC, an entity based in Sumner.
The asset, located at 3003 West Valley Highway E., is an industrial storage warehouse built in 2015 that totals 117,747 square feet, according to public documents. The one-story property sits on 6.2 acres. According to Google maps, the warehouse is currently occupied by mattress store Sound Sleep Products.
Sitting in the heart of the Kent Valley, the property is approximately 3 miles north of Sumner and roughly six miles to the east of Fife. Additionally, the asset is about six miles north of Puyallup and about three-and-a-half miles from access to the intersection of Washington State Route 167 and Washington State Route 512.
DCT is a publicly-traded, real estate investment trust (REIT) that specializes in the ownership, development, acquisition, leasing and management of bulk-distribution and light-industrial properties, according to the company’s web site. The company’s business platform serves companies on both a national and local level and across various industries such as medical, consumer products, online retail, logistics, manufacturing and government.
Along with its acquisition of the storage warehouse in Sumner, the company has several in-the-works projects in the Puget Sound region. One of these is the under-construction Blair Logistics Center Building A, a 543,000 square foot building in the Fife/Tacoma submarket (shell construction is scheduled to be complete in third quarter 2018). And in August 2016, the company acquired 14.6 acres in the North Kent Valley submarket to develop the currently-under-construction DCT Hudson Distribution Center, a 288,000 square foot project.
According to the company’s first quarter 2018 earnings report, as of March 31st, the company’s Puget Sound region portfolio included 31 buildings totaling 4,089 square feet, which have an average occupancy rate of 98.7 percent.
The wider industrial market in the Puget Sound region, also, is in a state of change. According to a first quarter 2018 industrial market report written by Kidder Mathews, the vacancy rate for the region’s industrial market rose to 3.3 percent, up from the figure of 3 percent posted in fourth quarter 2017. First quarter saw delivery of 570,606 square feet, while absorption was negative 457,147 square feet, according to the report.
And the industrial market is set for activity in the months ahead. During the first quarter of this year, there were over 1.1 million square feet of leases signed, though most of the tenants will be moving into the new spaces in second quarter 2018. There are currently 24 projects totaling 6.1 million square feet underway in the Puget Sound region, with another 15.3 million square feet in the pipeline primarily in Pierce and Thurston Counties, according to the report.
In terms of sales activity, in 2017, there were 204 transactions totaling $998.8 million square feet, versus the 250 sales totaling $1.46 billion in 2016. In first quarter 2018, there were 59 sales totaling $362 million, according to the report.
