UPS has made two big moves to improve its distribution efficiency in New York City.

The shipping giant signed two triple-net leases for massive industrial sites, one in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and the other in Maspeth, Queens, The Real Deal reports. Between the two properties, UPS will lease about 1.7M SF on deals reported to be long term, but without a specific length disclosed.

The 1.2M SF Red Hook site was until recently the site of Italian developer Est4te Four Capital's planned industrial-to-office conversion, but that project never got off the ground. Est4te Four conceded after failing to raise the requisite capital, selling the land and its six industrial buildings in May to New Jersey-based Sitex Group, which kept the buildings' industrial use and quickly found a tenant in UPS.

The 475K SF warehouse in Maspeth was until recently occupied by pharmacy chain Duane Reade as a distribution center, before it moved operations to New Jersey. Solil Management, the company formed by the late Sol Goldman's children, has owned the warehouse since Goldman passed it to those children as part of his will.

With the 1.7M SF of new distribution space, UPS seems to be positioning itself for continued supply chain competition with Amazon, which agreed in September to develop an 855K SF distribution center of its own on Staten Island.