Manulife Investment Management (Manulife IM) has announced a strategic partnership with Foundry Commercial to acquire, develop, and lease industrial outdoor storage (IOS) sites in key infill industrial markets throughout the Southeast. The portfolio consists of 10 sites located in Atlanta, Nashville, Dallas-Fort Worth and Jacksonville. Three of the sites have completed construction and were acquired by Manulife IM directly; the remaining will be developed in partnership with Foundry.
“Our investment in IOS is part of a larger alternatives strategy to invest in industrial and residential adjacent sectors with significant tailwinds. Partnering with Foundry was a logical choice given their extensive expertise as a top tier industrial developer and considerable knowledge in IOS,” said Jessica Harrison, head of transactions and capital markets, real estate equity, U.S., Manulife IM. “Today’s market is undeniably challenging. We continue to source and structure interesting opportunities which seek to generate outsized risk adjusted returns on behalf of our clients, which we believe is a key differentiator of our real estate business.”
“We are thrilled to form this new strategic partnership with Manulife IM,” said Pryse Elam, Foundry Commercial’s chief investment officer. “Together we seek to drive compelling investment performance for investors as early entrants into this growing and exciting alternative property type of IOS.”
Manulife IM’s real estate platform, with $19.2 billion in assets under management as of March 31, 2024, provides investment solutions globally as part of its comprehensive private market’s capabilities. Its platform offers core, core-plus, value-add and opportunistic strategies spanning over 84.6 million square feet of commercial real estate across the U.S., Canada and Asia Pacific. The real estate investment team leverages its global platform, regional market knowledge and deep relationships to identify opportunities that drive results for its clients, the company said.
Headquartered in Orlando, Florida, Foundry Commercial is a full-service commercial real estate company with an integrated development and investments platform leveraging the insight of local knowledge, brokerage teams, property and construction managers. Since 2014, Foundry has deployed over $4.4 billion across 30 million square feet of projects and currently has $2.7 billion in assets under management.
“Targeting IOS, which shares the same drivers as industrial with a fraction of the capital costs, we continue to see the benefits of our vertically integrated platform with leading local execution capabilities in today’s environment by unlocking investment opportunities that are unavailable to the general marketplace,” said Principal Rick Coe, who leads IOS investments for Foundry.
