Real estate firm with family ties to tenant buys Hanover warehouse for $128M
The 190-acre property that includes SanMar’s Richmond distribution center sold last month for $128 million. (Image by Vidtech)
Two years after becoming a distribution hub for current lessee SanMar Corp., an industrial warehouse near Ashland is in the hands of a new owner with family ties to the wholesale promotional apparel supplier.
The SanMar Richmond warehouse building at 10462 Hickory Hill Road sold last month to an LLC tied to Lake Washington Partners, a Seattle-based commercial real estate firm led by president Jordan Lott, brother of SanMar CEO Jeremy Lott.
The LLC, called J & J Hickory Hill and registered in Washington state, paid $128 million in a Sept. 22 deal that includes the 1.1 million-square-foot building and 190-acre property known as Graymont Industrial Park. The group plans to rename it Hickory Hill Industrial Park.
Jordan Lott
Jordan Lott, who co-founded Lake Washington Partners with Jeremy in 2006, said the deal isn’t the first in which LWP has purchased buildings that had been or would be occupied by SanMar, which their father Marty Lott started in 1971.
“We have purchased buildings that they’ve been in and developed properties that they ultimately leased in the future,” said Jordan, who serves on SanMar’s board of advisors along with his brother and semi-retired father.
“We have a history of working with them,” Jordan said. “There’s a family connection.”
The seller was an LLC tied to Indiana-based Becknell Industrial, which developed the $50 million project on spec after the building’s originally planned tenant, home improvement retail giant Lowe’s, opted out of the project in favor of a comparably sized facility at Deepwater Industrial Park in Richmond.
Becknell purchased the Hickory Hill property in 2021 for about $4.7 million from an entity tied to New York-based Raith Capital Partners and Massachusetts-based Equity Industrial Partners. The building was completed in 2022, following a half-year delay because of a stop-work order that the county issued in light of land disturbance work starting before permits had been issued.
Construction vehicles on the site in 2021, when a stop-work order halted the project. (BizSense file photo)
In 2023, SanMar announced it was taking the entire building to make it its primary East Coast distribution hub, with commitments to invest at least $50 million into the facility and employ nearly 1,000 workers.
Hanover assessed the property this year at over $77 million, up from just under $74 million when SanMar moved in two years ago.
SanMar employs more than 5,000 workers in the U.S. and sells apparel from more than 30 brands. The company produces T-shirts and supplies wholesale imprintable clothing and accessories.
The Hickory Hill building is the first acquisition in Virginia for LWP, whose portfolio consists of 38 properties totaling 11 million square feet in 10 states, most of them in Washington state. The Seattle-based company develops and invests in office, industrial, distribution and multifamily properties.
Jordan Lott said LWP liked the Hickory Hill property for its East Coast location and potential for expansion. The site, which includes the former Camptown Races horse racing track, is north of Hickory Hill Road along the west side of Interstate 95, just north of Ashland.
“We think that the Hanover County market and its proximity to the Eastern Seaboard, that I-95 corridor up and down the East Coast, is really a market for industrial that tenants are going to want to be in for decades,” he said. “We think this is the type of asset that tenants are going to want to be in for the very long term.”
The 190-acre property has room for more buildings. (Image by Vidtech)
Lott said the building is able to be expanded and that the property could accommodate additional structures, though he said there are no immediate plans to develop the property further.
“One of the things we liked about this particular deal is that it’s a relatively large site for the amount of square-footage that’s on it. Over 1.1 million square feet, that’s a huge number to begin with, but the building itself is technically expandable, and we believe there’s opportunity to build additional structures on the property itself,” he said.
Lott deferred questions about SanMar’s lease and operations to SanMar. Questions sent to the company Friday were not responded to in time for this story.
The $128 million purchase price for the Hickory Hill property nearly matches what the Lowe’s distribution center at Deepwater sold for two years ago. That 110-acre property and 1.2 million-square-foot warehouse, developed by Richmond-based Hourigan, sold for $127 million in 2023 to Realty Income Corp., a publicly traded REIT based in California.
The region’s industrial real estate market has stayed hot since then, with more recent deals including Lingerfelt’s $31 million sale last month of a 188,000-square-foot warehouse in the Meadowville Technology Park in Chesterfield. Earlier this year, the firm sold Port 801, a 240,000-square-foot distribution warehouse in Chesterfield, to national firm LBA Logistics for $35 million.
Also in Chesterfield, New York-based PNK Group is building an 846,000-square-foot industrial facility at 1640 Ashton Park Drive after buying the 86-acre site for $12 million. And in the past year, Ares Management Corp. bought 619,000 square feet worth of warehouse space in eastern Henrico for nearly $67 million.
