Heller, Coates families pay $4.1M for Tulsa warehouse

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City), Apr 20, 2007 by Kirby Lee Davis

A partnership between the Heller Family Investments LLC and John and Mary Coates paid $4.1 million for the last of five Kansas City Life Insurance Co. bulk warehouses on the market.

The sale of the 100,000-square-foot Airpark Distribution Center 3 marks the third such investment by the Heller family this year, and the second by the Coateses. Topping the occasion, United Warehouse Co. of Wichita just signed a long-term 100-percent lease for the 11605 E. 27th St. North warehouse, which had stood empty since its completion in February 2006.

That lifts United's Tulsa operations to well over 800,000 square feet.

The buyer, Emerald Glen I LLC, is owned by the Heller Family, the Coateses, and the limited partnership JEG1111, which is operated by the Coateses.

JEG1111 - with another Coates entity, MEG1111 LP - also joined with the Heller Family's $4.2 million March acquisition of the 100,000-square-foot Airpark Distribution Center 2 at 11427 E. 27th St. North.

United Warehouse also leases 100 percent of that site.

Bob Kroblin, business development director for United in Tulsa, said the logistics management company now runs two shifts to keep up with demand.

"We're very bullish," he said of the economy. "Companies are seeing the value of outsourcing logistics functions. Nobody does their logistics functions well. They don't make money on logistics. They make money selling their products."

Patrick Coates of Coates Commercial Properties, who represented the buyers, said John and Mary Coates (his parents) also acquired 3.2 acres of vacant land beside Airpark Distribution Center 3, for control of future development.

Matt Klimisch, first vice president with the Tulsa office of CB Richard Ellis of Oklahoma, represented seller Kansas City Life to complete its divestiture of five Tulsa spec industrial buildings it built between 2004 and 2006. Klimisch has said the insurer decided to sell while the market remained strong.

Tulsa's warehouse vacancy rate fell to 6.56 percent at the end of 2006, according to a CBRE survey. It had stood at 7.36 percent at midyear 2006 and 7.42 percent at the close of 2005.

In January a group of Tulsa investors under the firm ASI 400 LLC paid $7.25 million for the 100,000-square-foot warehouse at 13555 E. 61st St. and the 57,450-square-foot neighboring building at 13105 E. 61st St.

The following month the Heller Family made its first warehouse investment, paying $4.1 million for the 100,000-square-foot Airpark Distribution Center 1 at 11401 E. 27th St. North.

The three Airpark buildings sit at Apache and Garnett Road, just off U.S. Highway 169. All three offer 30-foot ceilings, 18 dock- high doors and grade-level doors.