Kia Expands Distribution Hub With $6M Lease

ALLENTOWN, PA-Kia Motors America expanded its northeast distribution hub by 25% in a relocation from 7542 Morris Court in the Westpark Business Center here to a new build-to-suit facility at nearby 7553 Morris Court. The new lease has an aggregate value of $9 million, according to representatives of New York-based Studley, which manages the Irvine, CA-based automaker’s nationwide real estate needs.

Conshohocken-based Keystone Property Trust, which was acquired by Colorado-based ProLogis in the interim, constructed the new facility. Kia’s new lease is for 210,000 sf of the 265,535-sf building. Its previous distribution facility occupied 169,000 sf. In negotiating the new lease, Studley included a holdover provision for the existing facility that allowed Kia to delay relocation until Oct. 15, when its existing lease was schedule to expire, saving Kia from an overlapping rent obligation.

David Kim, corporate managing director, and Tim O’Rourke, managing director in Studley’s Los Angeles office, represented Kia along with Matthew Sall, senior managing director in Studley’s Philadelphia office, who was the local-area broker on this transaction. Charles Lee and Don Chase, SVPs, and Pat McBride, VP of Keystone, represented the owner.

“We revaluated the firm’s northeast hub and determined that we should locate a new, larger facility in the same city to maintain the efficiency that the firm enjoys with the Allentown site,” says Kim.

By working with the owner for Kia’s current facility and new build-to-suit, Sall says, “we secured the additional 50,000 sf that Kia needed…as well as secured both termination and expansion rights” for the new facility.