Just Sold: Investor buys Eagan warehouse for $3.2 million, sells for $5.5 million.

Byline: Anne Bretts

Editor's note: "Just Sold" is a Finance & Commerce feature based on certificates of real estate value recently filed for commercial transactions and significant residential transactions in Twin Cities counties. Additional details in the transactions come from Plat Research, the Minnesota Secretary of State's Office, company documents, online real estate listings, F&C archives, CoStar and other research. Some purchase prices and per-unit calculations have been rounded.

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A private investor in Kansas is a very happy man these days, thanks to a couple of deals put together by Joshua Huempfner and Blake Martin of Upland Real Estate Group Inc. in Minneapolis.

"We made him $2 million in two years," Huempfner said of the purchase and sale of an office warehouse at 2922 West Service Road.

The story's happy ending came Oct. 15, when Unifirst Corp., a Wilmington, Massachusetts-based uniform and facility supply company, paid $4.8 million, to W.H. Warehouse LLC, an investment entity in Leawood, Kansas. It was one of five offers received during the six months the property was on the market.

The price works out to $83.42 per square foot.

The 57,537-square-foot office-warehouse was built in 1996 on 5.67 acres at 2922 W. Service Road. The Class B building has six dock doors, two drive-in doors and 34-foot clear height. The location is in the northwest quadrant of the intersection of Interstate 35E and Lone Oak Road.

UniFirst now operates out of 7,284 square feet of leased space at 9201 E. Bloomington Freeway in Bloomington.

The story gets better when you go back to 2016, when Huempfner and Martin sold their client the building, which came with a seven-year lease to Beacon Roofing Supply Inc., a solid national tenant. Just two years into the lease Beacon acquired Allied Building Products and relocated its operations to St. Paul. With the Unifirst deal in place, Beacon was able to buy out its lease for $600,000. That gave the seller $5.4 million, plus the rent for the months the building was dark.

UniFirst started 1936 in a Boston horse barn with a handful of employees and a few dozen customers, according to the company's website. Today UniFirst has more than 14,000 employees and more than 300,000 business customer locations from 255 facilities in North America and Europe.

Purchase price: $4.8 million cash

Price per square foot: $83.42

Last sale: Seller paid $3,047,500 in 2015

Date of deed: 10-15-19

ECRV released: 10-22-19

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