Walmart pays $223M for the Riverside cold-storage building it's leased since 2010

ConnectCRE: Walmart Realty, a Walmart subsidiary, bought the 507,000 sf cold-storage facility at 1001 Columbia Ave. from State Street Corporation for $223 million — roughly $440 a square foot. Walmart has leased the building since 2010 and will keep running it for temperature-controlled distribution.

JLL's Scott Coyle, Peter McWilliams and Tim O'Rourke represented Walmart, with senior industrial-real-estate manager Jomar Benoit on the company side. Eastdil Secured represented State Street.

The deal turns a 15-year tenancy into ownership. Coyle tied it to temperature-controlled demand outpacing supply across the greater LA basin and the IE's standing as a key food-distribution market, calling existing large-format cold storage effectively irreplaceable. For a tenant that's run the plant since 2010, buying it locks in capacity rather than competing for scarce space.

The building sits less than four miles from Interstate 215, the 60 and the 91.