In the News—Week of September 5, 2022
Deal of the Week
A Dallas-based multifamily and mixed-use real estate company purchased a 198-unit apartment complex in Round Rock, Texas, for approximately $54 million. This transaction was closed by Stephanie Welch, Vice President and Escrow Operations Manager, in our Dallas Office.
National
Entrepreneur switches from data centers to RV storage facilities
Gary Wojtaszek, who sold his company that owned data centers for about $15 billion early this year, has decided to go heavy into properties that store recreational vehicles, The Wall Street Journal reports via RV Business. Wojtaszek and private-equity firm Centerbridge Partners have created RecNation RV & Boat Storage, a company that has bought 31 properties in Texas, Florida and Arizona. The company stores not only RVs but boats, all-terrain vehicles and other expensive toys for big boys, as the saying goes. RecNation hopes eventually to expand to as many as 400 properties. “It’s not a really well-run, professionally managed industry,” Wojtaszek tells the Journal. “It’s just mom-and-pop operators.”
Energy & Efficiency
Germans scramble for firewood as natural gas prices shoot up
German households are facing high run-ups in gas bills — if they can get enough gas to heat their homes this winter. So families are trying to gather enough firewood to make it through the winter, Quartz reports. Nearly half the German households are heated with gas — or were. About a quarter have relied on heating oil. Only around 6% have been relying on firewood. Now German suppliers are running out and having to import wood from Poland. Although the EPA in the United States and the German government have declared burning wood carbon neutral, many scientist disagree.
Texas
Stream Realty completes second phase of giant industrial park
Stream Realty Partners has announced that one of the biggest industrial projects in the Houston area is up and running and looking for more tenants, the Houston Chronicle reports. Stream is finished with Phase 2 of Empire West Business Park, a 300-acre development in Brookshire. Empire West Business Park occupies nearly a mile of frontage along both Interstate 10 and U.S. 90 and consists of six buildings with 2.3 million square feet of industrial space.
Texas
Demand for data centers in metroplex outpaces construction industry
The data center market has been hot in 2022, driven by an increase of employees working from home, The Dallas Morning News reports. In the first half of 2022, data center demand across the country almost doubled from a year earlier. And in the Dallas-Fort Worth market, the demand was tenfold as great as in the first two quarters the year before. Figures from commercial property firm Jones Lang LaSalle show Dallas ranked fourth in data center absorption, trailing Phoenix, Northern Virginia and the Pacific Northwest. But right now, builders in the D-FW metroplex are having trouble keeping up with the demand. JLL predicts that the D-FW area will see record leasing of data centers in the year ahead.
Arizona
Work begins on industrial park that will occupy 1 mile of frontage road
Merit Partners, First Industrial Realty Trust and Diamond Realty Investments have started work on the first phase of C|303, AZ Big Media reports. At build-out, C|303 will span 1 full mile of Loop 303 frontage. The first phase will have more than 1.75 million square feet of industrial space at the northwest corner of Loop 303 and Camelback Road in the Phoenix area’s West Valley. “Requirements for industrial space have become increasingly sophisticated, but C|303 has anticipated those needs,” Merit Partners president, Kevin Czerwinski, says.
Mexico
Work begins on aqueduct as Monterrey suffers through a record drought
Construction work was set to begin Sept. 2 on El Cuchillo II aqueduct in Nuevo León state, Bnamercias reports. The $757-million project is estimated to be completed in eight months. The aqueduct is being financed by public and private sources. Interior Minister Adán Augusto López says that by adding another aqueduct to the El Cuchillo dam, 5,000 more liters per second of water will be delivered to the urban area of state capital Monterrey. A record drought has caused water shortages in Monterrey.
