Boston REIT buys manufacturing facility at Mon Valley business park in Washington County
January 3, 2019
Tim Schooley
Pittsburgh Business Times
An active buyer has made what’s expected to be the first institutional investment at the Alta Vista Business Park in what’s been a flurry of activity at the Washington County park.
Real Estate records indicate that the developer group of a manufacturing facility for publicly traded Gardner Denver Holdings Inc. in the Alta Vista Business Park has sold the facility to Boston-based Stag Industrial Holdings for $15.25 million.
A representative for Stag was not immediately available for comment.
The seller was 2011 Alta Vista Investments II LP lead by Washington County developer John LaCarte, also a principal of his family’s Model Cleaners business and a board member of the Mon Valley Alliance.
LaCarte wasn’t available for comment.
Lou Oliva, executive managing director of the Pittsburgh office of Newmark Knight Frank, represented the seller and confirmed it's the first time an institutional buyer has acquired real estate at Alta Vista, a Mon Valley park that’s experienced the ups and downs of the Marcellus Shale play.
Gardner Denver Nash, a subsidiary of the Milwaukee-based manufacturer, first moved to Alta Vista in 2011 to be able to expand into a newly built facility of more than 100,000 square feet.
Stag has been an active buyer of industrial property in the Pittsburgh market.
A publicly traded Real Estate Investment Trust, Stag bought two buildings totaling more than 500,000 square feet from Al. Neyer at the Clinton Commerce Center in the past two years, among other properties it owns in the Pittsburgh area.
Oliva said the investment interest in industrial property is relatively strong right now, with demand exceeding supply.
“There’s a lot of interest in well located Class A properties with long term leases in place,” said Oliva. “To the extent more come to the market, they will sell, based on the demand.”
The sale is the latest event in a busy couple of months at Alta Vista, a 256-acre park in Fallowfield Township, in the Mon Valley along the eastern edge of Washington County.
In early December, the Mon Valley Alliance, a nonprofit organization that owns the park, announced that manufacturer Apex International had bought a 12.95-acre parcel at Alta Vista on which it will build a new headquarters and manufacturing facility of more than 100,000 square feet expected to be completed in 2020.
In October, Nine Energy Service announced it would open a new regional office at Alta Vista next year expected to be 38,000 square feet and employ 125 people.
Christopher Whitlatch, CEO of the Mon Valley Alliance, said another sale is also in the works at Alta Vista, where there's about 50 acres left to sell and develop.
Along with a more concerted marketing approach for the park, Whitlatch sees Alta Vista's new activity as indicative of improving circumstances in the oil and gas business.
“During the downturn, the one thing that western Pennsylvania has done really well is build infrastructure,” he said. “With the prices coming back to a level that encourages both investment and activity, that has benefited all of Washington County.”