Despite the continuing contraction of manufacturing activity in Rhode Island, the market for industrial space continues to be active, at least based on a number of recent transactions involving a Warwick commercial real estate firm.
Precision Park Partners LLC last week reported that it had purchased 229,000 square feet of office and industrial space in East Providence, Lincoln and Cumberland for a total of $10.8 million. The purchases were made from two companies that have no need for the space anymore.
Precision Park paid $7.4 million for four properties owned by Electron Fusion Devices Inc. that totaled 119,000 square feet. Three of the properties are located on Waterman Avenue in East Providence, while the fourth is on Blackstone Valley Place in Lincoln.
The real estate partnership, whose principals are John Laramee and Donald Wignall, paid $3.4 million for a Hope Global facility on Industrial Road in Cumberland that totals 110,000 square feet. In both cases, the companies said that they were consolidating operations into other facilities, although according to Charles T. Francis, president of CB Richard Ellis/New England’s Rhode Island office, which was involved in all the transactions, EFD will lease the space in its four former buildings until space currently occupied by APC MGE on Catamore Boulevard in East Providence is ready for the company.
Laramee said in an interview that he and Wignall wanted to get back in the market after they sold the old Monet jewelry factory on Pawtucket Avenue in East Providence for $6.2 million in October 2006 to Bank of America. The factory had been rehabbed by the bank and turned into a call center, and the bank exercised a purchase option in the lease.
Precision Park was started about four years ago by Laramee and Wignall, although the two have been working together for 25 years and have used other entities to make their transactions. Other properties owned by Laramee and Wignall include the Airport Business Center in Warwick, a 700,000-square-foot facility that is fully leased, and the Warwick post office on Strawberry Field Road, where they own the building and the land.
Laramee has confidence in the Rhode Island market, he said, and now that his son and Wignall’s son have joined the company, they are looking to become more aggressive in the market. And he has no doubt that the firm will be able to fill the space it just purchased.
“We’ll find tenants. That’s what we do,” he said. As manufacturing slows down, Laramee added, the buildings are likelier to be used for office space. Other likely uses would be research and development, and warehousing.
What attracted Precision Park Partners the most to these properties is location. The EFD buildings on Waterman Avenue provide easy access to Interstate 195, while the Lincoln facility sits right off Route 116 and near Route 146 and Interstate 295. And the Hope Global building sits hard against the intersection of Interstate 295 and Route 114.
While acknowledging that EFD was consolidating operations, Derrick Johnson, spokesman for Nordson Corp., EFD’s parent company, said Electron Fusion Devices is not downsizing. The company makes dispensing devices that help other companies apply adhesives to their products. Nordson is based in Westlake, Ohio.
Johnson said about 288 people worked at the four facilities, which included industrial office space and a manufacturing facility. The company’s new home contains 115,000 square feet.
Hope Global had already vacated the Cumberland facility – which most recently housed 50 employees – and put the property for sale because the company has no interest in the real estate business, said Cheryl Merchant, president and CEO of the NFA Corp. subsidiary. The company employs 375 at its 300,000-square-foot facility on Martin Street in Cumberland, where it develops and manufactures engineered textile components for commercial customers.
