Crown Realty adds to Imperial Center portfolio

After selling a distribution facility last fall, Crown Realty and Development has added to its portfolio in the Imperial Center business park near Research Triangle Park.

The Irvine, Calif. company paid $7.475 million for a 182,000-square-foot warehouse at 4400 Emperor Boulevard. The property is fully leased to Phoenix Telecom Solutions, which moved in in March.

The space was previously occupied by Flextronics.

The seller was Meridian Development Group of Clearwater, Fla. Meridian bought the property in May 2007 for $6.2 million.

In December 2007, Crown Realty paid about $115 million for 13 office and industrial buildings at Imperial Center business park, off Interstate 40 at Page Road.

Last fall, Crown Realty sold one of those properties -- the Essex Center, a 450,000-square-foot distribution center -- to data storage company EMC for $22.6 million.

Chris Norvell, a broker with Cassidy Turley who represented Meridian in the sale, said Crown Realty's latest purchase was a natural fit for the company.

This is the third major sale in and around RTP that Norvell's team has been involved in over the last nine months. Cassidy Turley represented Crown Realty in the Essex Center sale and Grosvenor Investment Management, which sold the Research Tri-Center last month to Northwood Investors for $76.95 million.

"In general, the sales have been pretty brisk especially in that RTP submarket and most everything has been transferring above $40 a foot," Norvell said.

The 4400 Emperor property traded for $41 per square foot, while both the Essex Center and Research Tri-Center traded at about $50 per square foot.

Norvell said the warehouse market is much healthier than it was a decade ago after the tech bust.

"I think it's fair to say that we're in a much better position now that we were during the last recession," he said.

The warehouse vacancy rate in the Interstate 40/RTP submarket was 11.4 percent at the end of the first quarter, according to Karnes Research of Raleigh, up from 9.9 percent during the first quarter of 2009.

The warehouse vacancy rate for the entire Triangle was 15.3 percent in the first quarter.  The I-40/RTP submarket contains about 50 percent of all in the industrial space in the Triangle.