By Marc Stiles
The Puget Sound area’s industrial market is surging and attracting investors.
The latest to enter the market is Bixby Land Co., a Newport Beach, California-based investor and developer. It has bought two new industrial buildings in Auburn and Sumner from Panattoni Development Co., for a total of $12.4 million. The buildings are fully leased to an aerospace company and a communications firm.
Spurred by greater Seattle’s strong economy, the region’s industrial market is surging. Big new buildings are going up, but not fast enough to keep up with demand. This has caused rents to rise more than 8 percent in the Kent Valley, and investors like Bixby are flocking here to capitalize. Last year, total sales volume surged 202 percent to $2.4 billion, according to international research firm Real Capital Analytics.
Bixby owns properties in California, Arizona and Nevada, and is now making Seattle “a major focus,” said Bixby Senior Vice President Mike Severson said, who added that the company is looking to buy more assets here.
In Sumner, Bixby bought a 63,768-square-foot building at 14513 32 nd St. E. The tenant is Omada International, a new company that supplies the aerospace industry. Last spring, Omada acquired Carlson Formetec, a Tacoma company that specializes in a technology for forming titanium for aerospace.The Tacoma company, which now operates in a 25,000-square-foot facility, is the second acquisition for Omada.
Bixby also acquired a 34,435-square-foot building at 1417 West Valley Highway N. in Auburn. Tellwork Communication is the tenant.
Real estate brokers Brett Hartzell and Taylor Odegard of CBRE (NYSE: CBG) negotiated the deal for Bixby and Panattoni.
