Chicago-based industrial real estate veterans Tom Barbera, JD Salazar and Joe Voet have officially launched Industrial Outdoor Ventures, a real estate investment company specializing in the acquisition, development and re-development of Industrial Service Facilities.
The company will provide real estate solutions for heavy industrial service users in the top-20 markets throughout the United States. With the launch, Industrial Outdoor Ventures becomes the first national real estate investor focused exclusively on outdoor storage facilities.
Industrial Service Facilities are mission-critical facilities that are used to store, maintain and dispatch equipment and/or bulk material. They are primarily used by the transportation, construction, construction material and utility industries.
“We feel the timing is right to target what is really an underserved market,” said principal and chief executive officer Barbera, in a written statement. “Our goal is to aggregate the product type into a national, investment grade portfolio and connect the dots across the various industries that use these kinds of properties.”
The company seeks to acquire $100 million in assets during the next 12 to 24 months with a five-year plan to amass more than $500 million in product type.
According to Barbera, quality, well-located facilities that provide immediate access to dense population centers are in high demand among users because of a lack of supply and high barriers to entry while the highly specialized nature of the asset type has discouraged many national industrial players who primarily build spec warehouse from focusing resources on this niche market.
Institutionalizing a non-institutional grade product should come naturally to the team – all of whom chose entrepreneurial job paths following long and very successful individual industrial real estate careers.