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First Industrial Realty Trust Divests Cleveland Portfolio
First Industrial Realty Trust, headquartered in Chicago, has sold off its last Cleveland-area assets in a roughly $100-million transaction, Crain’s Chicago Business reported. The new owner of the six-building, 1.2-million-square-foot portfolio in Glenwillow and Twinsburg, OH is EQT Exeter.
First Industrial is divesting properties in the Midwest to focus on the coasts, in markets with higher rent-growth potential, Scott McGregor, a senior investment officer with the REIT, told Crain’s.
“You can grow your income more handily in the coastal markets,” he said. “That prompted us to decide to leave the Cleveland market.”
The company had owned most of the buildings since 2006, when First Industrial bought a larger Northeast Ohio portfolio from Duke Realty Corp. At the time, Duke was departing the Cleveland-area industrial market and was preparing to divest its suburban office buildings and land.
