(HOUSTON) – Hines and Pinto Realty Partners announced today that they have hired the Houston office of Studley, Inc. to represent Pinto Business Park, a 971-acre master-planned business park located at the southwest corner of Beltway 8 and Interstate 45 in Houston. The business park is owned by Pinto Development Realty Inc., a subsidiary of Pinto Holdings Inc. The joint venture between Pinto and Hines gives Hines exclusive development rights.
The development program includes an immediate focus on build-to-suit transactions and individual land sales to corporate end-users, and afterwards, an expansion into the development of inventory for-lease buildings.
The joint venture also announced that an affiliate of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR), a leading global investment firm, has agreed to join Hines in investing in and developing the park.
"We are looking forward to leveraging Hines’ development capability on a site that we have owned for over 20 years,” said Ernie D. Cockrell, managing director of Pinto Realty Partners.
"With entitlements and development capital in place, now is the time to transform a best-in-class site into a best-in-class development."
“We are very excited about the opportunity to partner with Pinto Realty Partners and to continue to expand our relationship with Hines, one of the world’s preeminent leaders in commercial real estate,” said Ralph Rosenberg, global head of real estate at KKR.
Located in the heart of Houston's north/northwest submarkets, where industrial vacancy rates are some of the lowest in the country, Pinto Business Park is the largest, fully entitled, contiguous tract of land located inside Beltway 8 and outside the 500-year floodplain.
With drainage, detention, roads and infrastructure already designed, the site is shovel-ready, with tracts available for immediate construction and delivery.
Additionally, with contracted water capacity of over two million gallons per day and two operational commercial Municipal Utility Districts in place, the site offers corporate clients the benefit of over two years of completed entitlement work.
“Pinto Business Park will offer manufacturing clients the benefits of a large-scale, controlled business park setting, and distribution clients the benefit of a second-to-none location that has frontage and eight access points on the city's main connections to Houston and its surrounding markets,” said Palmer Letzerich, managing director at Hines.
"When fully built out, the park represents an opportunity of nine million square feet and a potential investment of more than $900 million.
Our flexibility to immediately develop build-to-suits and for-lease inventory product, as well our ability to perform construction management services or sell land to user-owners is already creating a significant activity level in the market.
We look forward to working with Studley in populating what will be the premier and best-located business park in Houston.”
John Simons, corporate managing director of Studley’s national Industrial Services Group, said, “With vacancy at a 35-year low of five percent, ongoing positive absorption, increasing values and moderate new construction, the Houston industrial real estate market continues to be one of the strongest in the country. Pinto Business Park is the largest development-ready business park in Houston.
Given the geographic location, Hines’ development capabilities, and the unrivaled flexibility to address corporate purchase and lease requirements that we can offer, Pinto Business Park is well-positioned to be the premier destination for any light manufacturing, warehouse, supply chain distribution or corporate consolidation requirement in the region. Tenants will be five minutes from Bush Intercontinental Airport and 12 minutes from downtown.
Distribution clients will be only 30 minutes from the Port of Houston and most importantly, able to make same day, up and back deliveries to all of the major metropolitan centers of Texas.”
Pinto Realty Partners, LP, a wholly owned subsidiary of Cockrell Interests LLC, serves as a diversified real estate investment and development platform that focuses on strategic real estate investment. Currently, Pinto Realty Partners directly owns and manages over $300 million in real estate assets. Its current portfolio includes large urban in-fill land development, a 450-acre deepwater industrial port focused on coal export and crude storage, and numerous other strategic land holdings and cash flow assets.
In addition to strategic one-off deals, Pinto Realty Partners seeks exposure to markets it believes are attractive by identifying and forming relationships with talented managers.
About KKR
Founded in 1976 and led by Henry Kravis and George Roberts, KKR is a leading global investment firm with $61.5 billion in assets under management as of June 30, 2012. With offices around the world, KKR manages assets through a variety of investment funds and accounts covering multiple asset classes. KKR seeks to create value by bringing operational expertise to its portfolio companies and through active oversight and monitoring of its investments. KKR complements its investment expertise and strengthens interactions with investors through its client relationships and capital markets platform. KKR is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE:KKR).
About Hines
Hines is a privately owned real estate firm involved in real estate investment, development and property management worldwide. The firm’s historical and current portfolio of projects that are underway, completed, acquired and managed for third parties includes 1,192 properties representing more than 482 million square feet of office, residential, mixed-use, industrial, hotel, medical and sports facilities, as well as large, master-planned communities and land developments.
With offices in 110 cities in 18 countries, and controlled assets valued at approximately $22.9 billion, Hines is one of the largest real estate organizations in the world. Hines is also a world leader in sustainable real estate strategies, with extensive experience in LEED, ENERGY STAR®, BREEAM, Haute Qualité Environnementale and DGNB green building rating systems.
Visit www.hines.com for more information.