If The Shoe Fits
Owner of Franklin New Balance facility doesn't see redevelopment opportunity
Sporting goods manufacturer Brine Inc. will vacate 125,000 square feet of office and distribution space at 47 Sumner St. in Milford by the end of the year.
New Balance Athletic Shoe Inc. of Boston bought Brine in 2006, and in the summer of that year said Brine's headquarters - and the almost 90 people who work there - would remain in Milford.
But according to New Balance spokesman Amy Vreeland, the Brine operation will move to an existing New Balance facility in Michigan by the end of the year as part of a company consolidation that's been in the works for a number of months.
47 Sumner St. in Milford.Limited Options
For real estate optimists, the New Balance move should spell opportunity.
Because of the age and configuration of properties like 47 Sumner, the real opportunity is for property owners keen on redeveloping their obsolete buildings as office or retail space. However, John H. Finley, of the Creative Development Co. and property manager for 47 Sumner, doesn't see a redevelopment opportunity for the New Balance property. He said turning that property into anything other than a distribution facility is easier said than done. Almost anything other than warehousing or distribution with minimal office use similar to Brine's would require expensive demolition, he said.
Without demolishing part of the building, there would not be enough land there for the parking required by a retail establishment. And the building's owner, Karl Greenman, would be better off demolishing the building and starting over if he wanted to develop straight office space there, Finley said.
"I don't know where you go," he said. "We just started marketing and getting plans together" to try to attract another distribution-type tenant to the building.
Regardless of interstate workforce economics, the ubiquitous single-story industrial building is no longer desirable for manufacturing, warehousing or distribution except in the most popular areas, where tenants tend to settle for older, low-bay space. Today's tenants want "high-bay" space with ceilings of at least 28 feet, said Brendan Carroll, vice president of research at Boston-based Richards Barry Joyce & Partners.
Thirty-two percent of industrial space along the southern section of Interstate 495 is vacant, and 90 percent of that vacancy is in facilities built in or before 1980.
Presently, the vacancy rate for high-bay buildings is also high, but that's because in the last three years, 4.6 million square feet of new, high-bay industrial buildings have been constructed along I-495, increasing the size of the corridor's industrial market by 55 percent. Demand for high-bay space is increasing, and 283,000 square-feet of high-bay warehouse space have been leased over the past year, Carroll said.
By contrast, 90 percent of the I-495 South industrial market's vacancy is in older, low-bay buildings, and that vacancy has climbed even as the supply of that type of space has decreased.
WBJ Web Partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments