Scout Cold Spends $28M On Suburban Chicago Industrial Property

Miami’s Scout Capital Partners spent $28 million on a 100,000-square-foot industrial property in suburban Chicago that more than quadrupled in value over the course of the pandemic.

The seller, suburban Chicago’s Clear Height Properties, acquired the property in suburban Elk Grove Village in 2020 for just less than $6.5 million, public records show, in a sale-leaseback with the tenant Brett Anthony Foods. The maker of ready-made foods used by restaurants, delis, groceries and hotels leased the space for a 15-year term and doubled its footprint across both buildings.

Since then, an 18-month improvement project adding a connector building between what had been two separate structures that Clear Height bought at 1250 and 1350 Greenleaf Avenue has been completed. Clear Height declined to disclose the cost. Scout didn’t return a request for comment.

The deal marked at least the third time Clear Height has more than tripled the value of a property it sold amid the pandemic, which has sent industrial real estate demand to record levels. Earlier this year, the company sold a seven-parcel Chicago-area portfolio totaling 450,000 square feet to J&L Real Properties for $36 million, including two buildings that sold for at least three times what Clear Height paid for them, including one bought just before the health crisis.

A glut of demand for big-box properties of over 200,000 square feet — an asset class with vacancy at a record-low 2.6 percent in the Chicago area — has caused a spillover of investment into smaller industrial buildings that are rarely built anymore as developers emphasize massive new projects, Avison Young broker Adam Haefner told The Real Deal this month.

Tenants in such properties ready to grow are facing little choice but to expand their current spaces — Brett Anthony increased its workforce by 30 percent during the construction project, a statement from Clear Height said.

Scout Capital in October also purchased a 350,000-square-foot warehouse outside Los Angeles for $117 million.