A joint venture between Wharton Industrial of New York and Chicago-based Walton Street Capital New York has acquired 32 industrial properties in Pennsauken, New Jersey. The nearly 1.2M SF portfolio was sold by the Bloom Organization, a Mount Laurel, New Jersey-based developer, for an undisclosed price.

The fully leased Twinbridge Industrial Park and Veterans Industrial Park properties are near Routes 73 and 130, two of the busiest roads in South Jersey. They offer access to Philadelphia via the Betsy Ross and Tacony-Palmyra bridges. Their tenants include Cooper Electric Supply, Enterprise Rent-a-Car, Kone, Lennox Industries, Nestle Waters, SodaStream and Sprint. Colliers brokered the sale and has been retained by the new ownership group to lease and manage the properties.

Twinbridge is a mix of single- and multi-tenant buildings completed by Bloom in the early 1990s. Bloom also developed the 12 buildings in Veterans Industrial Park, which the new owners are planning to rename Twinbridge West.

“It’s very hard to find properties like this, multi-tenant in a submarket where you become the largest landlord of industrial space in the [Pennsauken] submarket,” Colliers Senior Managing Director Marc Isdaner said. He arranged the deal with his colleague Ian Richman.

Wharton Industrial also plans to upgrade the park’s common areas, including new signage and enhanced landscaping. Along with Colliers, Wharton Industrial also intends to develop a website for leasing and maintenance activities.

Industrial properties have fared better than other asset classes during the coronavirus pandemic. The Philadelphia/South Jersey market attracts attention from outside investors because of its proximity to New York and lower rents than the Big Apple. The expansion of the Port of Philadelphia has also boosted interest.

Over the past three years, average rental rates in Southern New Jersey on new development surged 33%, according to CBRE. The brokerage estimated the average rent in the region at $6.55 per SF. That’s about half the price of high-demand areas in Northern New Jersey, such as the Meadowlands, Hudson Waterfront and Newark, which CBRE pegs at $13 to $14 per SF.

Contact Jonathan Berr at jonathan.berr@bisnow.com.