MetLife provides $110m loan for Washington warehouse

MetLife Agricultural Investments has provided $110 million in acquisition financing for a 456,400 sq ft cold-storage warehouse and distribution facility in Richland, Washington.

The 10-year, fixed rate loan was made to borrower Lexington Realty Trust, a real estate investment trust focused on single-tenant real estate investments.

The facility — with 36,340,650 cubic ft of temperature controlled area — is leased to a wholly-owned subsidiary of Preferred Freezer Services, one of the largest refrigerating warehouse providers in North America. The property is one of, if not the largest refrigerated warehouse in North America, storing and distributing approximately two billion pounds of frozen products annually.

Completed in July 2015, the 116-foot-tall facility at 2800 Polar Way also includes a 11,900 sq ft, two-story office, a 6,492 sq ft, two-story equipment/utility room, and 30,335 sq ft of mezzanine dock space.

MetLife’s Agricultural Investments Department, one of the largest agricultural mortgage lenders in North America, oversees an agricultural portfolio consisting primarily of mortgages placed on farms, ranches, food production, agribusiness and timberland. MetLife manages 504.5 billion in assets, as of September.

Lexington Realty Trust announced on Wednesday that the company had purchased a 190,000 sq ft industrial facility located in Detroit, Michigan for $29.7 million.

During World War Two, the entire town of Richland was government owned and housed workers for the nearby nuclear facility as part of the Manhattan Project, the secret military project created in 1942 to produce the first US atomic bomb.