Liberty Property Trust, the company responsible for Philadelphia’s Comcast Tower and Comcast Technology Center, as well as much of the Navy Yard’s redevelopment, has been bought by Prologis, a San Francisco-based company. The deal is worth $12.6 billion.
From the Philadelphia Business Journal:
The sale of Liberty to Prologis is the culmination of a multi-year effort by Liberty that started in 2009 to transform itself into an industrial real estate investment trust focused on owning and developing warehouse distribution centers across the country. At the time, it was prescient in reading the forces at work with the shift into online retail, which was still nascent but a fledgling area that was beginning to gain momentum.
Liberty pivoted and decided it would focus heavily on owning and developing warehouse-distribution centers while retaining a portion of its business developing office buildings, particularly in urban environments that were growing. At the time, it was in 14 industrial markets and the plan was to expand that footprint and reduce its office presence, which involved 16 different markets.
Liberty began to methodically sell its suburban office properties and unwind it business developing office space. The company has sold most of its office properties. Locally, it has put up for sale its remaining and most attractive properties at the Navy Yard.
Prologis will assume jettisoning $700 million in office assets Liberty had begun to unload from its portfolio and $2.8 billion of properties deemed “non-strategic logistics properties.”
The deal is expected to close during the first quarter of next year.
