CBRE Brokers Sale of Tacoma Industrial Property

CBRE announced the sale of Tacoma Gateway II, a brand-new 274,000-sq.-ft. industrial development in Tacoma, Wash., to Realterm. Brett Hartzell with CBRE’s National Partners Group worked with Shawn Childs and Monte Decker in CBRE’s Tacoma and Seattle offices to represent the seller, a partnership between Panattoni Development Company and a private real estate fund advised by Crow Holdings Capital.

Located at 12005 Steele Street South, Tacoma Gateway II is a Class A distribution building with dock-high and grade-level loading, 36-ft. clear heights and over 200 trailer parking stalls on an adjacent 4.77-acre yard. The site has immediate access to I-5 and Highway 512 and is also located near the Port of Tacoma. The property was completed in July 2021 and is fully leased to Unis, LLC, a third-party logistics company.

“Tacoma Gateway II’s record pricing is well-deserved. Panattoni and Crow Holdings Capital saw where the market was headed and developed a project that anticipated the needs of future industrial users. Demand for trailer parking has grown exponentially in the past two years, yet sites with vast yard space like this are extremely rare in the Puget Sound region,” said Mr. Hartzell, executive vice president, CBRE.

The combination of strong tenant demand and limited land available for new development has tightened the Puget Sound industrial market in recent quarters. Vacancy dropped to 5.5 percent while average asking lease rates climbed to $0.91 in the third quarter of 2021, according to CBRE research. Much of the new construction has migrated south in search of land and cheaper prices, attracting the attention of tenants. The Tacoma/Fife submarket led all Puget Sound submarkets in quarterly net absorption—recording 2.2 million sq. ft. of positive net absorption in the third quarter alone.