Blackstone’s Link Logistics developing North Las Vegas warehouse complexes

New York financial giant Blackstone is a major landlord in Las Vegas, with megaresorts on the Strip and other buildings in its portfolio.

Now, an industrial real estate firm it owns is developing its first Southern Nevada warehouse projects.

Link Logistics, which owns around 9 million square feet of industrial space in the region, recently announced plans to build two new complexes in North Las Vegas that will span more than 1 million square feet combined.

One project, Desert Palm, will feature a 350,000-square-foot facility on Cheyenne Avenue just west of Interstate 15. The other, Desert Willow, will consist of three buildings totaling 720,000 square feet at Commerce Street and Gowan Road, according to a news release.

Both are expected to be finished in the fourth quarter next year, the release said. It noted that Link focuses across the U.S. on infill sites, or plots surrounded by existing development.

Southern Nevada’s warehouse market grew considerably over the last several years and accelerated even more after the pandemic hit, as increased online shopping fueled demand for distribution space. Industrial vacancies are at all-time lows, and developers keep launching new projects, especially in North Las Vegas.

Joe Williams, director of development in the west region for Link, told the Review-Journal that infill sites are near population centers and can serve local businesses.

Matthew Duplantis, Link’s market officer for Nevada and Arizona, also pointed to the business generated by the convention industry and said if a building is a certain distance away from, say, the Las Vegas Convention Center, tenants are unlikely to get hired by attendees to truck in goods or materials.

Blackstone, led by billionaire Stephen Schwarzman, kicked off a real estate buying spree in Southern Nevada after the economy crashed a decade or so ago, acquiring rental houses, apartment complexes and office buildings.

It bought The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas for $1.73 billion in 2014 then sold the flashy hotel-casino for $5.65 billion in a deal that closed this spring. It still has a heavy presence on the Strip, having acquired, as a landlord, several MGM Resorts International-operated properties in recent years.

It purchased Bellagio’s real estate for $4.2 billion in 2019; teamed up to acquire MGM Grand and Mandalay Bay in 2020 in a deal that valued those properties at $4.6 billion; and purchased Aria and Vdara’s real estate last year for nearly $3.9 billion.

Blackstone acquired a huge portfolio of U.S. industrial buildings from Singapore real estate giant GLP for $18.7 billion in 2019, giving the buyer 179 million square feet of infill logistics properties.

Blackstone, which formed Link Logistics in 2019, acquired more than 4.7 million square feet of industrial space in Southern Nevada through the GLP deal, according to Duplantis.

Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342. Follow @eli_segall on Twitter.