Reid Townsend
D. Reid Townsend
Co-founder and Principal at MRP Industrial
As the name suggests, MRP Industrial is a heavyweight in the industrial sector, and that was true long before industrial became real estate’s hottest asset class. Since 2013, MRP Industrial has developed 50 Class A distribution centers, totaling more than 20 million square feet across the mid-Atlantic and Northeast. It has delivered more than $2 billion in ground-up developments for such tenants as Walmart, Wayfair, Kellogg’s, Frito-Lay, Mattel, La-Z-Boy and, the biggest of them all, Amazon.
D. Reid Townsend manages the sourcing, capitalization, design, construction and leasing of the portfolio. He focuses in particular on the financial performance of each project so it hews to the investment objectives of MRP Industrial and its joint venture partners. Over the past year, he’s helped the company successfully stabilize more than 5 million square feet of new projects, with Amazon accounting for less than 2 percent of its leasing activity.
“There are countless new entries dipping their toes into industrial development, and this increased demand is driving up valuations for land and stabilized properties,” Townsend said.
Its most notable recent deal was the acquisition of the former Bainbridge Naval Training Center in Cecil County from the State of Maryland. Decommissioned in 1976, nature had taken over the 1,100-acre property, which the U.S. Navy transferred to the state in 2000.
“MRP was able to entitle over 440 acres for a 3.8 million-square-foot logistics campus in under nine months from contract,” Townsend said. “The first two buildings, totaling 1.6 million square feet, are scheduled to be delivered in spring 2023.”
This year MRP Industrial will break ground on seven new industrial parks, delivering 14 buildings and over 7 million square feet across Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
“We are also entering a period of uncertainty in the real estate market as investors evaluate the impact of rising interest rates and the risk of a global recession,” Townsend said. “We are confident that our experience, knowledge and well-established relationships across the industrial sector will prove invaluable to put the MRP portfolio in position to continue delivering above market returns to our clients and investment partners.”
