🔒With three warehouse purchases in early 2025, New York-based Snowball Developments expands growing CT portfolio

Snowball Developments President Brian Ker describes the 87,525-square-foot East Hartford warehouse his company purchased for $5.95 million in early March as “a big, white box.”

It’s an apt description for the roughly 58-year-old industrial building at 12-14 Eastern Park Road. The large, metal-sided facility is tucked onto nearly 4 acres just off Route 5.

Its exterior white paint could use a touch up. There are many cracks in the pavement. Ker, during a recent visit, pointed to bay doors with no leveling mechanisms to help meet the height of incoming trailers. The building also lacks awnings to keep rain from seeping through bay doors.

Ker said he plans to spend up to $800,000 in the short-term on repairs and modernization, confident of rising rents and unmet demand in the Greater Hartford market.

“We are not a big-box industrial developer,” Ker said. “We are not a big, institutional player. We are very opportunistic in terms of what we acquire. We are not looking to buy shiny buildings. We are looking to buy buildings that we have a high conviction we will be able to improve — improve the rent roll and improve the value.”

Launched in 2021, New York-based Snowball has so far spent $108.6 million buying 10 Connecticut warehouses, according to land records. The company has spent another $40 million to $50 million to acquire three New Jersey industrial properties, with another Garden State deal in the works, Ker said.

In Connecticut, Snowball has bought primarily decades-old class B and C buildings that need some upgrades and have room for rent growth. Ker said he plans to spend up to $10 million on renovations to his Connecticut portfolio over the coming two years.

“We want to demonstrate to our competitors as well as elected officials and the community our commitment to upgrading the industrial stock in this region,” Ker said. “It’s needed. There has been 20 to 30 years of disinvestment. … It’s starting to get reinvested in, and we want to be part of that story. In fact, we want to lead that story.”

Brisk pace

Ker’s company remains on the hunt for logistics properties, targeting secondary industrial markets with strong labor forces and constraints preventing the construction of new warehouse space.

So far, the strategy has held up, as rents keep rising due to several factors, including users getting priced out of warehouses closer to Boston and New York City, Ker said.

“Tenants in those markets that can’t afford to pay those prices, including paying higher taxes on higher valuations, are going to be seeking a more cost-efficient location,” Ker said. “That cost-efficient location is central Connecticut.”

Snowball’s acquisitions in 2025 have continued at a brisk pace, with three purchases by early March. That includes a 52-year-old, 507,000-square-foot South Windsor warehouse purchased for $27.85 million in February — Snowball’s largest and most expensive acquisition to date.

Also in February, Snowball paid $17.27 million for a 53-year-old, 257,000-square-foot warehouse in South Windsor.

The company’s first two purchases in Connecticut — in Danbury and Norwich for a combined $15.7 million — were made in early 2022, at a time, Ker said, the young company was trying to “build momentum.”

Value add

Ker said he’s comfortable with the prospects of long-term demand, given Connecticut’s increasing resistance to build new warehouses, and a skittishness about speculative development in the state.

Snowball’s value-add strategy often starts with exterior improvements, such as extending paved areas for parking and outdoor storage.

The company is currently applying for local zoning approval for up to $1.75 million in improvements to a 112,000-square-foot South Windsor warehouse, at 555 Nutmeg Road North. Snowball paid $9 million for the 12-acre property in early 2023.

There, Ker plans to renovate loading access and expand parking and outdoor storage areas to accommodate the building’s current tenant — tire and auto products distributor U.S. AutoForce. The company’s lease expires next January, but Ker has expressed confidence U.S. AutoForce will renew.

In Danbury, Snowball is seeking permission to pave about 2.5 acres of excess land for trailer parking and outdoor storage.

“It’s not a huge lift to improve the property this way,” Ker said. “A big part of the industrial storage market today is for outdoor uses and parking.”

Steady demand

Nicholas Morizio, president of real estate services firm Colliers in Hartford and New Haven, said Snowball has been paying prices that seemed “a little high,” but strong demand has kept the inventory of available logistics space and overall vacancy rates low, boosting property values.

Morizio said he doesn’t expect that to change until there is a major shift in the broader economy.

Despite this dynamic, banks remain reluctant to finance speculative logistics development in central Connecticut, as opposed to neighboring Massachusetts and New York, he said. As of early March, Morizio had two companies searching for 80,000- to 100,000-square-foot buildings to buy, with few options available.

“It’s very difficult for owner-users to find something,” Morizio said.

According to a 2024 market analysis by real estate services firm Newmark, the Connecticut and western Massachusetts market ended last year with a 6.6% vacancy rate, up from 5.4% a year earlier, but well below the historical 8% average.

Average asking rents at the close of 2024 hit $7.27-per-square-foot, up 3% year-over-year, with New Haven County at the peak, with average asking rents of $8.57-per-square-foot, according to Newmark, whose analysis excludes Fairfield County.

The market saw 800,000 square feet of absorption, due mainly to gains in the Greater Hartford area.

Newmark Executive Managing Director Art Ross, whose company represents two Snowball properties, said current trends match well with Ker’s strategy. Last year saw “decent” price appreciation and absorption, especially compared to the Greater Boston and Hudson Valley regions, he said.

As of early March, there had not been any major layoffs regionally, Ross noted. And industrial real estate demand remains relatively strong in central Connecticut, which has little available space and is still a bargain compared to nearby markets, Ross said.

“There is rent growth,” Ross said. “They (Snowball) see that, and they are taking advantage of it.” 