Developer buys nearly 40 acres plus 2 sizable warehouses in Petaluma

A Midwest developer with past experience of building large distribution warehouses in the North Bay is back with $46.5 million in investments in Petaluma commercial property.

Affiliates of Indianapolis-based Scannell Properties purchased two existing industrial buildings between Highway 101 and North McDowell Boulevard in April then nearly 40 acres of industrial-zoned land along the Petaluma River last month, according to brokers of the land deal and public records.

On May 28, Scannell Properties Number 388 LLC purchased 39.2 acres at 500 Hopper St. along the Petaluma River for $20.1 million from an affiliate of Silicon Valley-based Bay West Development, according to Cushman & Wakefield, which helped broker the land deal and public records. That works out to be almost $12 a square foot.

A Scannell regional representative had no comment on the purchase, saying it was too early in the process.

Trevor Buck, executive director of Cushman & Wakefield’s North Bay team and one of the agents in the deal, said the property attracted interest from developers of and investors in property types other than industrial.

“Scannell proved to be an ideal buyer for this sought-after property given their experience and knowledge of the local area, coupled with their close work with the city, ultimately putting themselves in the pole position to close on the property,” Buck said in the deal announcement Wednesday.

On April 15, Scannell Properties No. 375 LLC bought two light-industrial and warehouse buildings on Southpoint Boulevard on the east side of Highway 101 for $26.9 million, according to public records. The 755 Southpoint building has 88,466 square feet and 775 Southpoint, 93,500 square feet, Cushman & Wakefield marketing materials said. The sale price works out to about $145 a square foot.

The seller of the buildings was Sandy Bay LLC, an affiliate of Sistema US, which started in Novato in 2008 as a distributor of clamp-close food containers for New Zealand-based Sistema Plastics. The distributorship moved to Petaluma after the purchase of the Southpoint buildings in 2013.

Newell Brands, whose portfolio includes Paper Mate, Sharpie, Rubbermaid and Rohnert Park-based Marmot, picked up Sistema Plastics in late 2016 for $660 million.

Scannell Properties isn’t new to local real estate. Several years ago, it built one of the North Bay’s largest private buildings, a 650,000-square-foot distribution warehouse for Jackson Family Wines and Biagi Bros. in American Canyon. It was the first LEED Gold-certified warehouse in California.

The developer also built 27,000 square feet of office space in south Napa for Constellation Brands and has a 90,000-square-foot speculative industrial building project on Airport Boulevard in south Napa.

Robert Scannell started the company in 1990, and it has completed build-to-suit and speculative commercial building projects in the U.S., Canada and Europe.

Buck, Steven Leonard and Brian Foster of Cushman & Wakefield’s North Bay office represented the 500 Hopper land seller, BWD Petaluma LLC, and have been marketing 775 Southpoint for lease.