Dedeaux led the joint venture, the company’s second project in Vernon with Ledo Capital Group.
The recently completed center is a 46,422-square-foot cold storage facility in Vernon. It is fully occupied.
The building sits on a roughly 2-acre lot acquired in 2019.
Colliers International Group Inc.’s Scott Heaton represented the buyer. Cushman & Wakefield Inc.’s Jeff Chiate and Mike Adey represented the seller.
Dedeaux built the project under a long-term lease agreement with a local restaurant group.
The company completed the cold storage facility in March. It has separate kitchens for the tenant’s various restaurants.
The site has cold prep, a fully racked cooler and freezer, dry storage space, high clearances, seven dock-high doors, and one ground loading door fronting a refrigerated dock. It also has 3,000 square feet of office and mezzanine space.
“This is a very complex and sophisticated food facility, given the tenant’s specific needs for each of their restaurants,” Dedeaux Properties Principal Brett Dedeaux said in a statement.
“Well located and efficient cold storage is critical to the success of restaurant businesses, especially during these troubling times, where perishable product needs to be carefully managed,” he added.
Cold storage has been in high demand.
In 2019, online grocery sales grew roughly 22%, and they’re expected to increase 40% this year, according to data from Jones Lang LaSalle Inc.
The brokerage said demand for cold storage will likely increase as a result of the pandemic, especially in urban areas.
Currently, there are roughly 250 million square feet of cold storage inventory in the United States, JLL found.
Many cold storage properties are outdated, according to the brokerage, giving investors opportunities to build new facilities and increasing demand to purchase and lease new ones.
JLL also found it is difficult to turn older warehouses into cold storage facilities, leading to more speculative construction of new assets. A new cold storage building can cost $130 to $180 per square foot to building.
