SparrowHawk Wins Top Industrial Transaction Award

Best Industrial Transaction: 7100 Global Drive

Shannon Clinton Correspondent Louisville Business First

A casual conversation with the bondholder of a bankrupt company’s vacant building led to the site’s renovation, expansion, lease and sale within a relatively short time frame, said Alfredo Gutierrez, president of Houston-based SparrowHawk LLC.

The building at 7100 Global Drive in Louisville, within Jefferson Riverport International industrial park, was owned by Circuit City, whose bondholders took over the building after the electronics retailer went bankrupt.

FBL Financial Group Inc. — FBL being an acronym for Farm Bureau Life — was the lead bondholder, Gutierrez said.

“We have a relationship with them, having done some joint ventures with them,” he said. “Every time I’d go to Louisville to look at buildings, I’d go by this building and say, ‘This is what you need to do.’”

Finally, his Farm Bureau contact said, “You just need to buy it,” Gutierrez recalled, so in 2013, he purchased the 205,000-square-foot building for $5.3 million.

It had been vacant for about five years but still held promise.

Gutierrez learned that Charlotte, N.C.-based Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated, the largest independent marketer, producer and distributor for the Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Co., was looking for property in Louisville to replace its older, outdated building.

He pitched the Global Drive property to company officials, who said they’d need 100,000 square feet of additional space and 10 acres of parking.

Gutierrez agreed and secured a long-term lease for the property with CCBCC.

More than $12 million in renovations commenced, using mostly local labor, Gutierrez said. Improvements included a new roof, a two-story office and construction of the expansion used for refurbishing machinery and refrigeration equipment.

Gutierrez successfully acquired 10.5 acres from Jefferson Riverport International for trailer storage and negotiated a long-term three-acre ground lease with an adjacent landowner for proper drainage and traffic flow.

Negotiations for this transaction began in November 2013, construction continued throughout 2014 and improvements on the original portion of the building and most of the parking lot were completed in January 2015. The 100,000-square-foot expansion was occupied by June 2015.