Saxum Real Estate has scooped up a 465,256-square-foot cold-storage and dry-warehouse complex on Columbus’s west side that serves Mars Petcare’s neighboring production campus. The facility at 5303 Fisher Road sits on roughly 21.6 acres and will remain under a long-term lease to Mars Petcare US, extending the Summit, New Jersey firm’s footprint into a major Midwest food-logistics market.
County transfer records peg the deal at about $70 million, according to Franklin County filings reported by Traded. The transaction also appeared in coverage by CoStar, which notes that the building is fully leased to Mars Petcare and sits directly beside the company’s manufacturing campus. Industry observers describe the site as a mission-critical logistics extension rather than a simple speculative warehouse play.
What Saxum Bought
The property offers roughly 168,000 square feet of freezer space and about 300,000 square feet of ambient warehouse, according to Saxum’s announcement covered by Real Estate NJ. “This acquisition furthers our conviction of targeting mission-critical cold storage and food-related industrial assets backed by strong tenancy,” Sean Gilbert, Saxum’s head of acquisitions, told the outlet. The facility’s dozens of dock doors, trailer parking, and dedicated freezer cells are built to support high-volume, temperature-controlled distribution for the nearby production campus.
Price History and Ownership
The Fisher Road property has cycled through institutional ownership in recent years. Cantor Fitzgerald Income Trust listed the asset in its investor materials and SEC filings as a 465,256-square-foot cross-dock cold/dry storage facility acquired in March 2022. Those documents outline the building’s freezer capacity and dock configuration and record the prior purchase in owner filings as per Cantor Fitzgerald Income Trust. Saxum’s reported purchase price suggests investors are still willing to pay a premium for well-located, single-tenant, food-grade industrial real estate.
What It Means for Columbus
Mars Petcare has operated manufacturing at the Fisher Road campus for decades, and the 5303 storage facility functions as an integrated support hub for those operations, Real Estate NJ reports. Deals like this highlight steady investor appetite in Columbus for mission-critical industrial properties tied to essential supply chains. Local brokers note that the mix of long leases and the specialized demands of cold storage tends to keep vacancy low and values comparatively resilient.
What’s Next
Saxum’s outreach to industry press framed the acquisition as part of a broader cold-chain strategy, while Mars Petcare had not issued a public statement about the sale in initial trade coverage. Brokers referenced in reporting, including Newmark contacts mentioned in that coverage, handled parts of the sale process, signaling a brokered institutional transaction rather than an off-market quiet deal. Investors and local industrial watchers will be keeping an eye on whether Saxum opts to upgrade the freezer systems or simply continue operating the property as a turnkey logistics hub for Mars.
