Parkit Enterprise is adding to its portfolio in the National Capital Region with the acquisition of an industrial building in Gloucester. The Toronto-based firm said Friday it has closed a deal to purchase a 140,000-square-foot industrial property at 1650 Comstock Rd., just south of the intersection of Cyrville Road and Highway 417, for $9.5 million. […]
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Parkit Enterprise is adding to its portfolio in the National Capital Region with the acquisition of an industrial building in Gloucester.
The Toronto-based firm said Friday it has closed a deal to purchase a 140,000-square-foot industrial property at 1650 Comstock Rd., just south of the intersection of Cyrville Road and Highway 417, for $9.5 million.
Parkit acquired the 35-year-old building and the surrounding 2.8-acre site from an “arm’s-length vendor” it did not identify.
The building, which includes about 67,000 square feet of leasable space, has clear heights of 20 to 55 feet and features two loading docks. It is currently occupied by Arkive Information Management, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Access, one of the largest records and information management service providers in the world, with about two years remaining on its lease.
Jones Lang LaSalle Real Estate Services, which marketed the property, said that while the site is “well-suited for Arkive’s operations,” it offers a “functional layout” that could be easily modified for “alternative warehouse and distribution operations.”
In a statement, Parkit CEO Iqbal Khan said the property “provides strong in-place cash flows, rental growth and adds scale to our existing Ottawa portfolio with excellent upside.”
It is the company’s fifth industrial asset in the National Capital Region and is located not far from some of Parkit’s other local properties, including a 75,000-square-foot light industrial complex at 1151 Parisien St. the firm acquired three years ago for $13 million.
The deal comes as some brokers say the Ottawa region is still facing a shortage of industrial space.
Steve Piercey, a vice-president at CBRE’s Ottawa office who specializes in leasing industrial properties, told OBJ last month the nation’s capital “has been deprived of industrial development for the last 40 years” despite a wave of major projects over the past five years.
Data suggest Ottawa’s total industrial footprint – which ranges from about 38 million square feet to 46 million square feet, depending on the source – continues to fall behind other similar-sized Canadian cities.
According to CBRE’s third-quarter industrial real estate report, for example, Calgary and Edmonton both have about 160 million square feet of industrial property, while Winnipeg has about 88 million square feet.
The lack of inventory is reflected in Ottawa’s vacancy rate, which was the second-lowest in the country in the third quarter at 1.5 per cent, just behind London, Ont., at 1.3 per cent.
Meanwhile, asking net rents for industrial space in Ottawa have risen from just over $12 a square foot in 2021 to nearly $16 in the third quarter of this year.
At the same time, other brokers say they’re sensing a bit of a slowdown in demand for bigger industrial assets.
Matt Shackell, a vice-president at Lennard Commercial Realty, recently told OBJ large chunks of space are still available at newly constructed developments such as Avenue 31’s National Capital Business Park and Rosefellow’s project on Huntmar Drive in Kanata.
“We’re pushing probably half a million square feet of brand-new product that’s never been leased, and it’s already built and ready to go,” he said.
In promotional materials for the Comstock Road property, JLL said the building is “strategically positioned” near Highway 417, the Via Rail station on Tremblay Road and Ottawa International Airport.
The company said the east end is Ottawa’s largest industrial submarket, containing 19.5 million square feet of space representing almost half of the city’s total industrial inventory.
JLL said average asking rents in Ottawa East reached $15.76 per square foot in the first quarter of 2024, reflecting a compounded annual growth rate of 7.4 per cent since the first quarter of 2022.
While the submarket’s industrial vacancy rate rose to 2.6 per cent in the third quarter from 1.4 per cent a year earlier according to data from Colliers, JLL said it expects new construction of mid-bay units to “absorb seamlessly” into the market.
“As such, the Ottawa East submarket continues to remain as an increasingly viable option to Toronto and Montreal,” the company added.
