Dynasty Property Group LLC added to its extensive property holdings Thursday when a $9.7 million deal closed for it to purchase nine rickhouses in Ohio County that are being leased to Green River Distilling.
The bourbon storage houses were built by Crown Investment Group LLC on Country Club Road in Hartford about five years ago, when the then-owner of the distillery, O.Z. Tyler, couldn’t reach a deal to build them in Daviess County.
Dynasty Property Group LLC owns many properties in the region, including Wildcat Plaza, Shawnee Plaza, The Thatch Shopping Center and several apartment complexes.
Jim Estes, Realtor/Broker with Greater Owensboro Realty, represented Dynasty Property Group in the transaction. He said the sale price for the 20,000-square-foot buildings is “very accurate market value.”
Estes said Green River Distilling had an opportunity to purchase the buildings, but declined.
“Green River Distilling would rather lease them,” Estes said. “It comes down to do you spend $10 million that goes against the bottom line, or do you just rent them for a while. As an example, a lot of times Chase Bank will own all of their buildings and turn around and sell them all and rent them back, for tax reasons. It’s a business strategy, really. It’s good for Green River from a stability standpoint to own part of the (rickhouses), but then from a tax strategy standpoint, it makes sense for them to lease part of them.”
Estes said commercial property values cycle differently than residential property, with some properties more attractive than others at this time.
“Warehouse property is at a premium, where office space, I always say COVID changed everything,” Estes said. “Companies realized they had these multi-million dollar office complexes that they were heating and cooling and paying insurance on, and they realized they could pay somebody a little bit more money to work from home and be just as productive. So you’re seeing companies go in and buy office buildings and repurpose them into apartment complexes, maybe retail on the bottom floor, mini storage — almost ‘condo-ing’ out the need.”
Estes said he’s seen downtown Owensboro commercial property go through a number of cycles, with whatever is the hot new shopping area in town always being a competitor.
“I’ll date myself by remembering when downtown was vibrant, and then they built Towne Square Mall, so everything cycled to South Frederica Street,” he said. “Then the cool thing across the country was, ‘Let’s rehab our riverfronts and our downtown areas.’ But what happens is the consumer didn’t change their way of thinking in regard to the malls. They still wanted to park directly in front of the door and walk in, so as your downtown spaces got larger, the (available) parking spaces didn’t increase.”