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CBRE Brokers North Vancouver’s Biggest-Ever Industrial Land Sale
June 20, 2024 2 Minute Read
CBRE’s Chris MacCauley has brokered North Vancouver’s biggest-ever industrial property sale.
MacCauley and Travis Blanleil advised ERCO Worldwide, a Toronto-based inorganic industrial chemical producer, on its sale of 100 Forester St. for a record $145 million to HTEC, which designs, builds, owns and operates hydrogen fuel production infrastructure.
The 21.4 acre site will be home to HTEC’s new North Vancouver Clean Liquid Hydrogen Facility, enabling the delivery of clean hydrogen transportation fuel throughout B.C. and the Pacific Northwest. ERCO Worldwide will lease back a portion of the property on a long-term basis for its own manufacturing operations, which include generating by-product hydrogen gas through electrolysis.
The sale of 100 Forester St. marked the culmination of a 24-month process involving transaction and capital structuring, regulatory strategizing, and zoning and land use approvals from District of North Vancouver.
“Transactions of this calibre and magnitude are a rarity in today’s market,” says MacCauley, who notes that it was Metro Vancouver’s second largest-ever industrial land deal in dollar value (Amazon had the largest).
“We ran a thorough process, a worldwide, international and national process, and it speaks to CBRE’s global reach that we, together with ERCO, were ultimately able to bring to the table a unique purchaser that was a fit for more than just the land acquisition.”
MacCauley says HTEC and ERCO had a decade-long relationship prior to the sale of 100 Forester, which helped the deal come together. “There were some synergies already in place between the two companies, and they were able to structure an ongoing partnership”
Amid Metro Vancouver’s dwindling land inventory, and with no path forward to increase that land inventory (mostly owing to government regulations), MacCauley says “we’re going to continue to see record pricing for industrial properties as owner-users who need to be in our market come to the understanding that this is the price you pay to be here.”
The sale of 100 Forester is a win for the buyer, seller and the environment, a demonstration of how businesses can align to achieve common goals while bettering the environment.
That’s almost as good as the record price tag.
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