Clarion Partners Pays $90M for Pepsi-Leased Industrial Complex Near Baltimore
By Nick Trombola April 8, 2025 5:25 pm
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It may not be Coke, but a Pepsi will do — a Baltimore-area industrial complex partially occupied by PepsiCo has traded hands in a high-dollar eight-figure deal.
Clarion Partners has paid $85.5 million, on behalf of an unnamed client, for City Logistics, a two-building, 300,786-square-foot complex on the southeastern outskirts of Charm City. Baltimore-based developer MRP Industrial sold the complex at 1201 South Caton Avenue, which it completed in 2023. The Business Journals first reported the news. MRP Industrial is an affiliate of D.C.-based MRP Realty.
PepsiCo occupies one of the buildings that spans about 113,000 square feet, for which it was purpose-built in late 2022. Carlisle Architectural Metals takes up about 109,000 square feet in the second building, with about 80,000 square feet vacant, according to MRP’s website. MRP acquired the property for redevelopment in 2021 from the Archdiocese of Baltimore for $18 million, as it had previously been the home of the all-girls Seton Keough High School, which closed in 2017.
A spokesperson for Clarion declined to comment about the most recent purchase, while a representative for MRP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The deal isn’t the only one involving both Clarion and MRP in the Baltimore region as of late. The two firms together purchased 63 acres from beer brewer Guinness’ parent company Diageo in February for about $36 million in a sale-leaseback deal. The land is adjacent to the Guinness Open Gate Brewery, less than five miles south of the City Logistics site.
Clarion was also involved, if only tangentially, in the heavily discounted sale of a Downtown Washington, D.C., office building last year. Douglas Development in August paid just $34.5 million for The Portrait Building, an eight-story property near the National Portrait Gallery, from Voya Investment Management. That’s a far cry from the $98.5 million Clarion paid for the property back in 2013. But Clarion had taken out a $41 million refinancing loan from Voya in 2020, on which it defaulted and transferred the property to Voya last May.
Nick Trombola can be reached at ntrombola@commercialobserver.com.
