Regal Ventures, Snowball, Devli JV buys Windsor, Conn. industrial asset

A three-partner New York joint venture has closed on a fully leased 186,603-square-foot industrial building in Windsor, Conn., where the sole tenant has manufactured heavy equipment since the mid-1970s and holds a lease through November 2034. Regal Ventures, Snowball Developments and Devli Real Estate bought 600 Day Hill Road, a 30-acre corner site at Marshall Phelps and Day Hill Road; all three are based in the New York City area, and Regal Ventures is managing the investment, which managing partner Sean Dainese described as the firm's first industrial acquisition in the Greater Hartford market. No purchase price appears in the public account, so the deal's yield is unverifiable from outside.

The tenant is the Spencer division of Howden USA Companies, a wholly owned subsidiary of Chart Industries. Spencer, historically the Spencer Turbine Company, makes heavy-duty, highly engineered air and gas handling equipment at the facility, which it has occupied since the mid-1970s. That tenure matters twice over: rent for the balance of the lease is a claim on the corporate parent rather than on a local operating company, and a shell built for such a narrow use pushes much of the residual value onto the 30 acres rather than the walls.

Dainese framed the purchase around the committed long-term tenant, an attractive cash yield and room to pursue more than one path to create value. Brian Ker, Snowball's president, in comments carried by IREI, emphasized the size of the site and its long-term potential, consistent with the way he describes his firm as a land-first industrial owner. Ker also put a number on what the deal means for Snowball: it is the firm's second acquisition in the City of Windsor and its fifteenth in the Connecticut industrial market. Fifteen buildings in one state is a position rather than a trade, and it makes the Windsor purchase read differently for each partner — for Snowball it extends an existing bias, while for Regal, whose industrial portfolio Dainese describes as growing, Greater Hartford is new ground.

With the tenant signed into the next decade and the rent fixed for the duration, any improvement in the asset's economics would have to come from the land around the building. Both men pointed there; neither put a plan on the record.