Provender Partners Recapitalizes One Million-Square-Foot Cold Storage Portfolio with StepStone Real Estate

Recap seeds investment program to acquire and develop food-related assets throughout the United States.

Provender Partners (Provender) and StepStone Real Estate (SRE), the real estate arm of private markets investment firm StepStone Group (Nasdaq: STEP) have completed a $158 million secondary and recapitalization of a one-million-square-foot cold storage portfolio with assets in the high-growth industrial markets of Oakland, CA; Las Vegas, NV; Berkeley, IL; Bolingbrook, IL; and Birmingham, AL.

Provender acquired the properties over the last three years in a joint venture with a global investment management firm that recently sold its interests to SRE on a secondary basis according to Provender Founder and Chief Executive Officer Neil Johnson. “In addition to acquiring our former partners’ interest, SRE will contribute additional capital to our investment program to help us build our platform and acquire and develop additional best-in-class cold storage and other types of food-related assets across the United States,” added Provender Chief Operating Officer John Long, Jr.

“Since originally acquiring the assets, we increased the portfolio’s occupancy rate to 100 percent by leasing the assets to high-quality companies critical to the nation’s food supply chain,” said Johnson. “We look forward to continuing to build and manage our portfolio with SRE,” he added.”

Tenants include local and regional wholesale food logistics companies, food service providers, and frozen food packagers with a remaining average lease term of approximately six years.

“Well-located and supply-chain essential cold storage and food-related industrial is one of our high-conviction investment themes,” said John Waters, Partner and Head of Investments at SRE. “We are excited to be partnering with a best-in-class manager like Provender to help us achieve this objective,” he added.

Michael Leggett, Sher Hafeez and Josh Lieberman of JLL advised Provender on the formation of the joint venture. JLL’s Capital Markets Debt Advisory Team of Brian Torp and Peter Thompson sourced the debt financing for the transaction.