Procter & Gamble Wins 2015 Best Industrial Deal Award

Monday, April 20th 2015

D CEO magazine presented awards in 15 categories at its third annual Commercial Real Estate Awards program, held at the Frontiers of Flight Museum. Here’s a look at those honored in the Best Industrial Deal category.

Winner: Procter & Gamble at DalPort Trade Center

A deal this big doesn’t come together overnight. in fact, it took two years of prep work before Procter & Gamble signed its 1.4 million-square-foot lease at DalPort Trade Center in Wilmer. While JLL’s Terry Darrow and Michael Swaldi worked out transportation and logistics issues for their client—one of the world’s largest consumer goods conglomerates—Panattoni’s Rob Riner was assembling a team to help him win what was known then in the market as “Project Sunshine.” On board were Alston Construction, Alliance Architects, Pacheco Koch, and leasing agent Nathan Orbin of JLL.

By the time P&G came to tour the tract of land that Panattoni controlled, Riner’s civil-engineering team staked out where the massive building would be constructed. “We had to paint and plant the picture firmly in the minds of the decision-makers,” he says. “Mind you, this was a 76-acre crop maze. So we used 10-foot sticks with different DayGlo-colored survey ribbons to achieve that on the bus drive-by tour.”

But, winning the deal called for much more. P&G and its brokers analyzed everything from how the trucks would queue up (1,000 trucks in and 1,000 trucks out per day) to how many right-hand turns the drivers would have to make. “It’s not a simple process,” Darrow says. “The industrial real estate business is very complicated.”

That’s especially true in North Texas, according to Riner. “DFW is a tough market in which to excel,” he says. “As Frank Sinatra said, ‘If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.’”

http://realestate.dmagazine.com/2015/04/procter-gamble-wins-2015-best-industrial-deal-award/