IRG pays $21M for a 422,727-sf St. Paul distribution facility

Industrial Realty Group paid $21 million for the former headquarters of The Sportsman's Guide, an online and catalog retailer, at 411 Farwell Avenue in South St. Paul, Minnesota, according to Connect CRE. The 422,727-square-foot distribution building sits on 19 acres in an established industrial corridor and is overwhelmingly warehouse: about 392,727 square feet of warehouse space and 30,000 square feet of office, keeping the office component under 10 percent of the floor area.

The configuration is what makes it work in distribution—cross-dock loading on three sides, 36 dock-high doors, two drive-in doors, a 110-foot truck court, 22-foot clear height, and substantial employee parking.

That works out to about $49.70 per square foot across the whole building and effectively less against the warehouse space alone, so the trade reads as an industrial asset deal rather than a redevelopment play. The dock doors and the truck court are the value; the office is a minority interest. The 22-foot clear height is not trophy logistics, but for a 423,000-square-foot box in South St. Paul it is serviceable, and the three-sided dock layout is rarer than the ceiling—the building competes on throughput, not on height.

The site is roughly two minutes from Interstate 494, on the broader Minneapolis-St. Paul interstate network, close to downtown St. Paul and within reach of Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport—the road access that makes a three-sided cross-dock viable for regional distribution. JLL's Chris Hickok, Dan Larew, and Jack Nei are overseeing leasing for the property.

Because the cross-dock infrastructure was already in place, IRG is paying for function rather than rebuilding—a working warehouse in a corridor that already has the roads to move goods, with the Twin Cities market adding operational square footage without waiting on new construction.