TUCSON, ARIZONA – An affiliate of Amazon, Amazon.com Services, purchased 51 acres across from its current Fulfillment Center at 6701 South Kolb for $7.5 million ($146,000 per acre). A portion of Block 3 in Century Park, the property will be used for construction of an approximate 100,000+ square-foot Delivery Station.

Amazon bought its current site in 2018 for its 1.2 million-square-foot building at 6701 S Kolb Road also in Century Park, with 63 loading docks, nearly 400 transport trailer parking spaces, along with 2,500 standard parking spaces, on the site. Amazon requested this location be annexed into the City of Tucson. Amazon’s fulfillment center brought 1,500 full-time jobs.

Amazon has multiple types of logistics facilities: fulfillment centers, sortation centers, delivery stations and other specialized locations, such as air hubs. Each of these locations, for the most part, functions in a specific step in the company’s supply chain.

Amazon Delivery stations are dwarfed by the size of their fulfillment centers. The average size of a delivery station is 123,292-square-feet, according to Amazon.

These Delivery stations are used to prepare customer orders for last-mile delivery service to customers. Amazon delivery providers then enable fast, everyday shipping to customers.

The explosion in locations for Amazon’s smallest logistics asset has happened fairly quickly. Amazon had 159 locations at the end of 2019 and 337 at the end of 2020.

Fulfillment centers are designed to fill orders, they’re not designed to optimize transportation in any way.

This is where delivery stations help Amazon. Trucks leave fulfillment centers with trailers full of unorganized parcels. The parcels are organized for transport — grouped by delivery location — at sortation centers and later the delivery stations.

It’s a process similar to what happens at other companies, like UPS or FedEx, and highlights the company’s continued trend to insource its logistics network.

Packages are loaded onto conveyor belts at delivery stations where they are then separated by the ZIP code for delivery. These parcels are then put on a pallet, wrapped, and loaded onto another truck.

This will be Amazon’s third delivery station in metro Tucson.

Steve Cohen with Cushman & Wakefield | Picor negotiated the transaction for Amazon and the seller, Valencia Kolb Properties of Tucson (Michael Farley, manager).

For more information, Cohen should be reached at 520.546.2750.

To learn more, see RED Comp #9524.

PHOENIX, ARIZONA — SB Real Estate Partners (“SBREP”) has completed the sale of a two-property, 365-unit multifamily portfolio in Phoenix, AZ to Rise48 Equity for $96.4 million ($264,000 per unit).

The sale, structured as separate transactions closing two weeks apart, included the 141-unit Portola at Grovers Park in North Phoenix and the 224-unit Portola West Valley in West Phoenix.  SBREP, which has built a sizable portfolio of approximately 1,500 units in Phoenix since entering the market in 2018, acquired both communities during the second half of 2020.

“We’re proud of the significant value we were able to create by substantially repositioning our Grovers Park and West Valley properties over a relatively short period of time,” according to Srijin Bandyopadhyay, Founder & Managing Principal of SBREP.  “While we continue to remain bullish as active buyers in the Phoenix multifamily market, we were also willing to adapt to the capital markets and round out a shorter-term business plan in order to deliver tremendous results to our investors.”

Rise48 Equity plans to spend over $8 million to renovate the exterior and interiors of both properties and rebrand Portola at Grovers Park as Rise on Cave Creek, and Portola West Valley as Rise at Estrella Park. Improvements to both properties will include fresh three-tone exterior paint scheme and new monument signs with an LED backlight to improve the curb appeal. In addition, Rise48 will renovate 100% of the unit interiors across the portfolio to the Rise48 Equity Platinum level finish as well as upgrade common area amenities.

Both properties were built in 1985 and feature a mix of one- and two-bedroom floorplans.  The apartment homes at Portola at Grovers Park, located at 17646 N Cave Creek Road, range in size from 550 square feet to 850 square feet.  Community amenities include two swimming pools and two laundry facilities.  Portola West Valley, located at 1801 N. 83rd Avenue, feature larger floor plans averaging 892 square feet.   Community amenities include a swimming pool and spa, lighted sports court, gazebo with barbecue grill and updated clubhouse.

PHOENIX, ARIZONA – The Nunez Self-Storage Group, working in conjunction with West Coast brokerage firm the Reiser Group, represented the seller in the disposition of a 70,243 SF asset in Ukiah, California.

NAI Horizon Managing Director Denise Nunez and Associate Victoria Filice represented the Rutner Family in the sale of Ukiah Self Storage at 2301/2381 S. State St., in Ukiah, California. The California buyer was a 1031 Exchange buyer with several self-storage facilities throughout the Northern California markets.

“This one was a challenging one which in the end all came together. The seller, through their research found the Nunez Self-Storage Group,” Nunez said. “We were able to present a valuation that was nearly $2 million more than what another self-storage broker had brought to the seller.

“The challenge for the seller was they needed to close before year end. We started our marketing process and had the deal in escrow for full price within 30 days. The first buyer could not complete the deal and now we had 30 days to find a buyer and close. We had a few 1031 Exchange buyers that we were able to go to quickly and we got it done,” Nunez said.

Built in 1992, Ukiah Self Storage was upgraded in 2004 and 2008 with room for potential expansion. It totals 70,423 NRSF and 627 units.

The Nunez Self-Storage Group closed more than $140 million in transactions in 2021.