Blackstone Lists Six-Property Industrial Portfolio in NYC, LI

Blackstone wants to unload even more industrial space.

The private equity giant, through its Link Logistics subsidiary, has listed a large industrial portfolio with JLL, The Real Deal has learned. The six properties in the package — five buildings and one infill parking lot — are in and around New York City, with two near La Guardia Airport, two on Long Island, one near JFK Airport and one in Inwood.

According to the listing, the portfolio totals 929,000 square feet and is fully leased, with one tenant on each property. The weighted average remaining lease term is 6.13 years.

Tenants include FedEx and Harris/Edo Corporation. The portfolio is being offered as a sale of REIT shares. No asking price was given.

The listing comes on the heels of Blackstone’s massive $3.1 billion industrial sale to Prologis. That portfolio consisted of 70 properties, mostly warehouses and distribution centers in markets across the country, spanning almost 14 million square feet.

The sales and the listing don’t suggest Blackstone, led by Stephen Schwarzman, is giving up on the industrial sector. According to the Wall Street Journal, the firm holds a global industrial portfolio valued at $175 billion. Nor does the company have plans to stop buying warehouses and distribution centers. In June, Blackstone bought a Whole Foods warehouse in Florida for $28.6 million.

The industrial sector has been one of the few consistent bright spots in commercial real estate over the past decade, powered largely by the rise in online shopping and Amazon’s push for fast deliveries.

Office buildings, meanwhile, have been deflated by work-from-home policies. In New York, available office space has hit an all-time high.

Blackstone has been ahead of this trend. In the wake of purchasing Sam Zell’s Equity Office Properties in 2007 for $39 billion, its global office portfolio was 60 percent of all the company’s holdings, but it has whittled that number down to 2 percent.

Blackstone declined to comment on the industrial portfolio listing. JLL could not be reached in time for publication.

One of the properties in the portfolio, a warehouse at 83-15 24th Avenue, near La Guardia, was purchased in 2019 by Blackstone from Steel Equities for $55.5 million. Another, 83-84 23rd Avenue, is close by. The other properties are 1 Johnson Road in Inwood, 1250 and 1500 New Horizons Boulevard in Amityville and 50 Emjay Boulevard in Brentwood.