In the last week, Milwaukee-based Phoenix Investors LLC, has purchased three industrial buildings at a total cost of $29.3 million and has increased its industrial real estate portfolio to about 6 million square feet in Wisconsin.
The company purchased Shur-Line’s two industrial buildings in St. Francis for $8.8 million in a sale-leaseback deal last week. The company, which makes paining products including brushes and rollers, has a 98,028-square-foot building at 4120 S. Kansas Ave. and a 293,500-square-foot building at 4051 S. Iowa Ave.
On Wednesday, Phoenix purchased the 415,000-square-foot Vilter Manufacturing Corp. building at 5555 S. Packard Ave. in Cudahy for $14.5 million from Joseph and Ellen Dentice.
Vilter is a unit of Emerson Climate Technologies Inc., a subsidiary of St. Louis-based Emerson Electric Co.
Today, Phoenix is closing on an 848,530-square-foot industrial building on 123 acres of land in Edgerton, just off Highway 51. The company purchased the property from Beloit billionaire Diane Hendricks for $6 million. The anchor tenant in the building is Storage Space Solutions, a logistics company to Waukesha-based Generac Power Systems.
“These purchases are different than some of our value-add strategies that we have employed, but demonstrate our faith in Wisconsin,” said Frank Crivello, executive vice president of Phoenix Investors.
The acquisitions come on the heels of closings in Dayton, Ohio and Tennessee, Crivello said.
“This is part of a broader strategy of not just acquiring property here, but other Midwestern states,” Crivello said.
Phoenix owns properties in 21 states including about 14 million square feet of commercial properties. A recent focus for the company has been blighted properties on Milwaukee’s north side, including the July purchase of the former Lowe’s building in Midtown center.
