Rockpoint announces acquisition of 1.03 million sf Richmond industrial campus

Rockpoint has announced the acquisition of Richmond Trade Center, a 1.03-million-square-foot Class A industrial campus in Chester, Va., about 18 miles south of downtown Richmond. Rockpoint Industrial, the operating partner exclusive to Rockpoint, and Rockhill, Rockpoint's property services affiliate, will manage and operate the campus; terms were not disclosed.

Developed in 2015, the campus sits on roughly 119 acres and comprises four cross-dock warehouse buildings and one light industrial building. That works out to about 8,700 square feet an acre, and the park appears laid out for truck circulation and flexible tenant layouts as much as for raw floor area. Two miles from Interstate 295 and six miles from Interstate 95 puts the property inside a 200-mile radius of more than 23 million people, according to the announcement.

The purchase lands in the middle of a busy stretch for Rockpoint. The Boston firm holds $13.0 billion in regulatory assets and has spent the past few weeks in motion: a $277 million construction loan on a Jersey City multifamily project announced in late August, the $47.1 million Fort Lauderdale hotel it bought with Newbond closed in early September, and 311 apartments under development in San Jose with Holland. Chester adds industrial to a recent run through apartments and hospitality, and the announcement casts the transaction as extending an industrial platform Rockpoint already runs.

"Richmond Trade Center gives us a portfolio of functional, high-quality industrial buildings in an attractive park setting to serve Richmond's growing and diverse tenant base," said Ben Harris, head of Rockpoint Industrial. He described Richmond as one of the Southeast's strongest industrial markets, pointing to accelerating investment in advanced manufacturing, data centers, fintech and health-tech along the I-95 corridor between Raleigh-Durham and Northern Virginia. The announcement carries no rents, no occupancy figure and no tenant roster, leaving the market call the sponsor's own.

The structure is doing as much work as the real estate. Rockpoint Industrial is exclusive to Rockpoint, and Rockhill keeps management and operations in-house, an arrangement that suggests the sponsor means to own and operate the campus rather than trade it, and one that gives it an operating arm in a submarket where it is already placing apartments, hotels and construction debt. The next acquisition will show whether Rockpoint Industrial stacks more product behind this one in the Richmond area, but with terms undisclosed the transaction adds a Class A landlord to Chester without handing the market a comp to underwrite against.