LOS ANGELES– Colony Financial has agreed to acquire Dallas-based Cobalt Capital Partners and its portfolio of 256 primarily light industrial properties for $1.6 billion.
The portfolio is leased to over 600 tenants and comprises over 30 million square feet across 16 major U.S. markets, with including Houston, Atlanta, Dallas and Chicago.
“Over the last ten years, we’ve grown Cobalt, along with our partner USAA Real Estate Company, into a leader in the industrial property market, and we now look forward to expanding our business as part of the Colony family,” said Lew Friedland, Cobalt’s founder and Managing Partner
The transaction is expected to close in December 2014. Cobalt’s management team, led by Lewis D. Friedland, is being retained to run the day-to-day operations of the business, including acquisitions, asset and property management.
Cobalt Capital Partners began in 2002 as a partnership between Lewis Friedland and USAA Real Estate Company to acquire and operate commercial properties throughout the U.S. Previously, USAA and Friedland partnered on a successful aggregation and disposition strategy for American Industrial Properties REIT, a NYSE-listed REIT that was sold in 2001.
In a press release earlier this year, Cobalt said: “Cobalt Capital Partners Continues Houston Acquisition Streak.” The February announcement said: ”These three recent acquisitions reflect Cobalt’s focused strategy of buying high quality light industrial assets in fundamentally sound submarkets like Northwest and North Houston. Cobalt’s ownership presence in Houston began over ten years ago and we will continue to target similar opportunities to grow our light industrial portfolio in this top tier distribution market well into the future,” said Lewis Friedland, Cobalt’s Managing Partner. At that time, Cobalt bought a 67,721 square foot light industrial building at 9565 Wingfoot Road in Northwest Houston.
Based in Los Angeles, Colony Financial, Inc. is a real estate investment and finance company that is focused on acquiring, originating and managing a diversified portfolio of real estate-related debt and equity investments at attractive risk-adjusted returns.