https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/news/2020/09/04/sansone-group-nashville-salt-lake.html
Sansone Group hits target in industrial sector with acquisition, sale
Sansone Group has closed on two deals key to the Clayton real estate’s firm new development strategy.
The firm acquired nearly 25 acres in the Salt Lake City market for two new ground-up speculative industrial developments. In the Nashville area, the firm sold its more than 700,000-square-foot value-add industrial building. The two deals are part of Sansone Group’s push for a development pipeline that’s largely bolstered by out-of-town projects. It hired Jeff Greenwalt last year to help with the firm’s industrial pipeline, and have made other similar strategic hires recently as well with the additions of Pete Crane for Southeast deals and Greg Thompson for its medical facilities developments.
“We’re looking across the country, from New Jersey to Utah,” Principal Jim Sansone said. “We’re driven by opportunity.”
Sansone Group partnered with Creve Coeur-based Argos Capital Partners to acquire 24.8 acres of land located in West Valley City, Utah, in the Salt Lake City metropolitan area. The duo plans to build two ground-up, speculative Class A industrial buildings totaling 404,800 square feet that’ll accommodate multiple tenants in a roughly $35 million deal.
It’s the first move in Utah for Sansone Group and its first partnership with Argos, a private investment management firm, that came as a result of Argos’ relationship with Jim’s brother Nick, also a principal at Sansone Group.
Both companies believe in the growth potential of the Salt Lake City market given its vacancy rate of around 4% and low cost of utilities, Sansone said.
They’re bringing a St. Louis team to deliver the spec developments: ARCO; Hercules Construction Management; Midwest Bank and Twain Financial; and Sansone Group’s Vince Bajardi and Jake Corrigan, who will lease the properties once delivered in spring 2021.
Meanwhile, the commercial real estate firm is celebrating the disposition of its Nashville-area industrial facility, a 709,651-square-foot building that it partnered with New York-based Fortress Investment Group to acquire in early 2019.
At the time, Sansone Group expected it would take three years for the building to be fully occupied given its condition, Sansone said. The firm embarked on a multimillion-dollar renovation, raised additional equity with local investors in St. Louis and hired JLL’s Nashville office to market it. And after 18 months, and the Covid-19 pandemic, the building recently sold to Dallas-based Westmount Realty. Sansone declined to share the sales price but said it “exceeded the investment criteria.”
“We’re certainly pleased with the results … we have been bullish on industrial and certainly that confirmed our opinion on the market,” he said.
