- What Prologis acquired the 1.3m sq ft facility on Aug. 28
- Why Deal adds to Prologis’ holdings in the GTA
- What next The deal involves a sale-leaseback with the single tenant, Rona
Prologis has added to its substantial holdings in the Greater Toronto Area with the acquisition of a massive Class-A industrial building for $361m, Green Street News can reveal.
Prologis acquired the 1.3m sq ft property at 8450 Boston Church Road in Milton from Sycamore Partners on Aug. 28. The price works out to approximately $270/sq ft. RBC Capital Markets Real Estate Group and CBRE co-brokered the transaction.
Rona, one of Canada’s biggest home improvement retailers, uses the property as a distribution centre and will lease it back from Prologis.
The transaction is the biggest distribution centre sale in Ontario since December 2023, when global alternative asset management firm TPG paid $990m for a 75% stake in two Class-A industrial business parks — Brampton Business Park ($329/sq ft) and Vaughan Business Park ($169/sq ft). Oxford Properties Group retained the remaining 25% in the assets and continues to manage the 5.1m sq ft portfolio. The transaction valued the portfolio at $1.3bn.
The Milton facility was built for Target in 2012 and then sold to home improvement company Lowe’s in 2015 for $106m. Lowe’s bought Rona the following year.
In February 2023, New York-based private equity firm Sycamore Partners paid $330m for the property as part of its purchase of Lowe’s Canadian retail business.
The property is on 79.3 acres zoned M2-33 and M1. The former designates a general industrial zone and the latter a business park zone. The main portion of the warehouse has a clear height of 38 ft. It has 180 truck-level doors, two drive-in doors and a shipping court providing 646 trailer parking positions and 20 tractor stalls. The site is fully fenced and gated with on-site security.
The property is able to accommodate expansion of approximately 275,000 sq ft.
“This acquisition represents our commitment to acquiring best in class modern logistics facilities, to facilitate further growth for our customers in key markets such as the GTA,” Bill Bates, vice president and investment officer for Prologis, said in a statement to Green Street News. “We remain focused on a disciplined and data driven approach to our capital deployment business, while assessing every opportunity in this market.”
Prologis, which owns or had investments in about 1.2bn sq ft of industrial space in 19 countries as of Dec. 31, 2023, is one of the biggest owners of industrial property in the greater Toronto and Hamilton markets, where it has at least 40 properties totaling over 10m sq ft. It has another 2.5m sq ft under construction.
