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23 HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | JUNE 14, 2021 FOCUS: LOGISTICS & DISTRIBUTION Warehouse workers at Veritiv Corp.'s Enfield distribution center transport and stack inventory. hot in all facets, including lease and sales activity as well as new construction. During the final three months of 2020 alone, for example, Amazon signed new leases for 403,000 square feet in Cromwell and 184,875 square feet in Wallingford, according to commercial real estate investment firm CBRE. The e-commerce giant, which leases millions of square feet in Connecticut, also recently announced it was opening a 104,000-square-foot logistics facility in Glastonbury in a former Nabisco warehouse. And construction continues on its new $200 million, 3.6 million-square- foot facility in Windsor on Kennedy Road. Plenty of other companies are in on the action as well, including Massachusetts-based dairy supplier Agri-Mark, which is opening a 500,000-square-foot distribution facility in Enfield. Distribution properties have also seen some of the biggest Greater Hartford commercial real estate sales of 2021. For example, New York-based real estate investment firm Metropolitan Realty Associates in February purchased a massive FedEx distribution center in South Windsor for $50 million. And all eyes are on a 300-acre plot of land adjacent to Rentschler Field and Pratt & Whitney's East Hartford headquarters that has been listed for sale as a potential logistics hub. Meantime, rents for industrial space in the Northeast rose significantly in the first quarter of 2021, with tenants paying 60 cents per-square-foot higher than the previous quarter, CBRE reported. The upward trend in distribution and logistics space isn't brand new, but has become more visible, said Adam Winstanley, co-principal of Massachusetts-based Winstanley Enterprises, which owns 8 million square feet of distribution and logistics space in Connecticut, including the Enfield Veritiv facility. "It's been going on since 2015, but it's only getting on peoples' radar screens in the last 24 months with the pandemic and the growth in e-commerce," Winstanley said. Additionally, Amazon offering two- day or less deliveries has increased online shoppers' expectations, Winstanley said. For the last four decades companies delivering to customers in the Northeast primarily worked out of distribution centers in Pennsylvania and parts of New Jersey, Winstanley said. To meet customers' increasing desires for quick delivery, these businesses are leasing space in Connecticut and Massachusetts to reduce travel time. Duclos pointed out that more Adam Winstanley Market Total industrial bldgs. Total sq. Ft. Available (%) Vacant (%) Sublease (%) 4Q 2020 net absorption 2020 net absorption Average rents (per sq. ft.) Hartford East 386 17,770,083 13.8 11 0.2 -8,801 -538,436 $4.99 Hartford North 462 31,648,160 8.3 7.2 0.5 -167,870 1,011,099 $5.39 City of Hartford 113 4,448,145 9.5 8.5 0 -16,850 -42,036 $5.50 Hartford South 278 12,275,984 9.3 8.9 0 384,651 417,576 $5.42 Hartford West 237 10,254,376 5.1 4.4 0 13,324 70,600 $5.30 Total Market 1,476 76,396,748 9.4 8 0.3 204,454 918,803 Hartford's industrial real market snapshot Source: CBRE Research, Q4 2020 HBJ PHOTOS | STEVE LASCHEVER