Bud Pharris
Senior managing director for the West region at Link Logistics
Link Logistics, Blackstone’s industrial real estate arm, has completed several high-profile warehouse deals in California over the past year — and all with Bud Pharris at the helm.
Before joining Link, Pharris was a senior development manager with Panattoni Development Company and then later switched to roles at DCT Industrial and CRG Real Estate. But when Link asked him to head up development out west in 2020, Pharris couldn’t resist.
“I said, ‘Let me think about it, yes,’” Pharris said. “It’s been an unbelievably fun, frenetic and exciting ride for the last five years.”
Now Link’s senior managing director for the West, Pharris is responsible for leasing, property operations and construction at the company’s roughly 995 buildings and 136 million square feet of logistics real estate in its 14 markets stretching from Denver to Southern California.
Some of Link’s major warehouse portfolio sales in the past year included the $202.1 million sale of a fully leased, four-property industrial portfolio with nearly 670,000 square feet in Southern California’s Inland Empire to the Boston-based Cabot Properties, as well as the $65.2 million sale of a 200,000-square-foot warehouse at 18045 Rowland Street in Los Angeles County’s San Gabriel Valley to Taiwan-based MSI Computers.
In addition, Link just finished a 2 million-square-foot, two-building development in California’s Inland Empire that was leased to a beverage distributor and a U.S.-based third-party logistics company, according to Pharris.
In total, Link has completed approximately 433 leases across 14 million square feet in the West region so far this year. Specifically in the Bay Area, Link completed more than 100 leases covering more than 2 million square feet, with most of the tenants being in the tech industry.
“I’m super proud of that,” Pharris said. “Really being able to respond to the needs for our customers that have technological needs, as well as just plain warehousing needs, I think it’s an incredible feat.”
As for what Link’s working on right now, it has ongoing developments in Carson and Long Beach, Calif., and it’s looking at plenty more opportunities. “We’re going to stick to our knitting as close in as we can until the last mile that serves our customers best,” Pharris said.
