Twinbridge Industrial Park in Pennsauken — Courtesy: Wharton Industrial
By Joshua Burd
PGIM Real Estate has provided $103 million in fixed-rate financing to the buyer of more than 1 million square feet of industrial space in Pennsauken.
The lender on Monday announced the transaction with DRA Advisors, which purchased the roughly 35-building Twinbridge Industrial Park from a joint venture of Wharton Industrial and Walton Street Capital, in a deal valued at $194.5 million. The Prudential Financial Inc. subsidiary noted that the portfolio is leased to dozens of tenants, with a location between the Betsy Ross and Tacony-Palmyra bridges that provides quick access to Philadelphia
PGIM’s Tom Goodsite led the financing effort for DRA’s acquisition.
“We’re excited to continue to build our relationship with DRA Advisors by partnering on this industrial portfolio transaction, which aligns with the focus of PGIM Real Estate’s core lending strategy,” said Goodsite, a managing director. “While the real estate market continues to show signs of volatility, we remain bullish on the industrial sector and are committed to lending on high-quality, well-located in-fill assets like those in this portfolio.”
Wharton Industrial announced the deal in late June, some three years after it purchased separate portfolios at the junction of routes 130 and 73 and consolidated them as Twinbridge Industrial Park.
“Despite others who were fearful of investing at that time, we saw the portfolio as prime real estate that we believed would weather economic uncertainties,” Peter C. Lewis, founder and chairman of Wharton Industrial, said at the time of the deal. “Supporting our belief were the low vacancies in the market, tightness of supply, proximity to Philadelphia and the diversity of tenants (many of whom were long-term occupiers providing essential services). Our intuition was greatly rewarded, with rents increasing more than 100 percent during our three-year hold, through strategic property improvements and extensive leasing management.”
