Concert Properties Ltd. has formed a joint venture with an affiliate of Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. for a Canadian industrial portfolio valued at approximately $1 billion with eight properties, totalling 5.3 million square feet.

The portfolio is made up of single-tenant and multi-tenant properties in cities such as Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary and Ottawa, Vancouver-headquartered Concert said in a Wednesday morning release. The assets are fully leased to a “diverse roster of credit tenants,” and benefit from “strong connectivity” to highway, airport and rail infrastructure.

The properties, which are in some of Canada’s largest urban logistics markets, represent stabilized, high-quality industrial real estate with embedded income growth potential, Concert said.

The Brookfield affiliate was unnamed. Details about the investment each company is making in the joint venture were not in the announcement, nor the addresses of the eight properties. Concert is forming the partnership through Concert Income Properties, its open-ended real estate fund.

“Concert has a history of building partnerships defined by shared alignment and a long-term view, and this one is no different,” Lindsay Brand, chief investment officer of Concert, said in the release. Brookfield, she continued, brings global scale and a disciplined approach to real estate investment. The two companies will be managing the portfolio on behalf of the joint venture, Brand noted.

The investment “reflects Brookfield’s conviction in high-quality logistics real estate in supply-constrained, high-barrier markets,” Andy Smith, managing partner of real estate at Brookfield, said.

“Concert has assembled and managed a strong Canadian industrial portfolio, and we are pleased to partner with them on assets that align well with our global logistics strategy.”

About Concert, Brookfield

Concert is a developer, owner and manager of apartments, condos, industrial and office properties. Unique to Concert is how it is owned by union and management pension plans and institutional investors.

Concert’s 72-asset commercial property portfolio is comprised of primarily industrial real estate at over 70 per cent. The company owns and manages 12.5 million square feet of space in the commercial portfolio which has a gross asset value of $3.4 billion, with industrial real estate making up over 80 per cent of the square footage.

Notable industrial properties in its roster include:

• 8875 Torbram Rd. in Brampton, Ont., an 895,038-square-foot industrial distribution and logistics facility; and
• 285250 Wrangler Crescent Rd. in Rocky View, Alta., a single-tenant 33,231-square-foot property.

Based in New York but originally headquartered in Toronto, Brookfield Asset Management holds over US$1 trillion in assets under management across infrastructure, energy, private equity, real estate and credit.

In its US$277 billion in real estate assets under management, Brookfield operates a portfolio of 800 logistics properties in 19 countries totalling 160 million square feet. Those assets include cold storage, last-mile transportation and multi-tenant distribution assets in key gateway and distribution markets.