432 Kelley Drive in West Berlin — Courtesy: Doors and Spaces Industrial
By Joshua Burd
Doors and Spaces Industrial has made another addition to its portfolio, acquiring a nearly 17,000-square-foot small-bay facility in suburban Camden County.
The investment real estate firm, led by capital markets veteran Brian Whitmer, said the five-unit property in West Berlin marks its fourth deal in New Jersey since its recent launch. The 16,550-square-foot building at 432 Kelley Drive also aligns with its strategy to professionalize a historically fragmented asset class, as it looks to leverage a location less than a half-mile from Route 73 and easy access to the New Jersey Turnpike and Atlantic City Expressway.
That provides critical infrastructure to the immediate area’s expanding base of service-sector and distribution tenants.
Terms of the sale were not disclosed.
“Our approach is built on the pillars of focused strategic SBI property acquisitions like 432 Kelley Drive as well as ground-up development,” said Whitmer, cofounder and managing partner. “Buying existing assets while simultaneously building new ones gives us a unique perspective on the asset class. We take the lessons learned from modern, purpose-built construction and apply them directly to our renovations of existing SBI stock. This allows us to cut through the noise and stay laser-focused on catering to what truly matters for the target tenant base and their long-term success.”
Based in Morristown, Doors and Spaces said it launched amid an institutional migration toward large-scale logistics that has displaced smaller tenants and amid the rise of the entrepreneur economy, which has created a wave of demand for units that can accommodate users under 5,000 square feet. As both an operator as well as an investor, Whitmer intends to apply in-house institutional-grade management, proprietary leasing technology and construction services to the asset niche, which he characterizes as the apartments of industrial.
“Throughout my career, I have focused on assets that are essential to the fabric of the economy,” said Whitmer, a former vice chairman with Cushman & Wakefield’s metropolitan area capital markets group. “SBI is a ubiquitous necessity, yet it has lacked the professionalized oversight and the economies of scale from portfolio management seen in the multifamily or big-box sectors. As a result, we’re deploying a technology-driven platform to provide high-quality, flexible environments for the entrepreneurs and regional businesses that are the true engines of economic growth.”
Whitmer spent nearly 20 years with Cushman, where he was part of a team that executed more than $12.5 billion in total transactional volume during that time, according to Doors and Spaces. His background also includes advising some of the nation’s largest real estate investment trusts and pension funds, as well as direct involvement in more than $2.2 billion of multifamily sales and specialized expertise in investment financing, providing what he described as a “forensic” analytical approach to the acquisition and management of small-bay industrial space.
He noted that the asset class is currently seeing record-low vacancy rates across the Northeast.
“Our start-from-scratch perspective has made us a much more particular buyer,” Whitmer added. “There are some non-starters — factors that might not always be common sense — that we’ve learned mean the difference between hitting top-of-the-market rents or not. By applying our development-side insights to existing SBI assets, we ensure every property in our portfolio is optimized for both tenant performance and investor returns.”
