The latest NAIOP podcast digs into the rise of industrial outdoor storage — the fast-growing sector reshaping how goods, equipment and materials move across the country.
Source: NAIOP Podcast, “Rise of Industrial Outdoor Storage,” June 12, 2026.
Alterra IOS has secured $244 million in acquisition financing from Blackstone Real Estate Debt Strategies to fund the purchase of 37 industrial outdoor storage properties nationwide.
The nonrecourse loan from Blackstone’s BREDS platform will finance the 37-site purchase — spanning 27 markets, 165 acres and more than 800,000 square feet — along with future acquisitions. It pushes the total institutional debt Alterra IOS has raised past $1.8 billion since the firm’s 2016 founding. Rather than conventional mortgage financing, Alterra structured the deal as an equity pledge with Blackstone.
We appreciate Blackstone’s creativity and collaboration in helping us achieve a solution aligned with our long-term capital strategy as demand for high-quality IOS assets continues to grow.Scott Whittle, CFO, Alterra IOS (via Commercial Observer)
The financing is the latest in a string of institutional commitments to Alterra, which has acquired more than 470 IOS sites across 37 states and recently drew capital from PGIM and the Bank of Montreal. The deal signals continued institutional appetite for a sector once dominated by small, local owners.
Source: Commercial Observer, “Alterra IOS Scores $244M From Blackstone for Acquisition of 37 IOS Sites,” by Brian Pascus, June 5, 2026.
Alterra IOS has acquired five properties across metro Denver and Colorado Springs, deepening its position in one of the country’s most supply-constrained industrial markets.
The five acquisitions, completed over the first quarter of 2026, total 36.4 usable acres and 128,000 square feet of accompanying warehouse space, and are all fully leased. Financial terms were not disclosed. Alterra now owns and operates 14 properties across 134 usable acres in Colorado.
It’s really supply constrained from a heavy industrial land perspective. The land use laws surrounding outdoor storage being a permitted use is not very prevalent.Parker Pearson, Partner, Alterra IOS (via Denver Business Journal)
The sites sit close to interstate highways, and Alterra cited Colorado’s population growth and economic momentum as reasons the state has become one of its top markets. The firm now operates roughly 450 IOS sites nationwide.
Source: Denver Business Journal, “Industrial giant expands Colorado footprint with five acquisitions,” by Catie Cheshire, May 7, 2026.
Alterra IOS has secured a $103 million credit facility from PGIM, backed by 23 industrial outdoor storage properties and earmarked to fund future acquisitions.
The facility, provided by PGIM’s real estate credit arm, is secured by 23 IOS properties across 18 U.S. markets and marks Alterra’s first debt financing with PGIM. Justin Horowitz of Cooper-Horowitz arranged the transaction.
PGIM’s partnership underscores growing confidence in IOS as a durable, long-term asset class.Scott Whittle, CFO, Alterra (via Commercial Observer)
PGIM’s Justin Levitt noted the sector is benefiting from surging tenant demand and a shortage of new supply, particularly across vacant or underutilized sites in dense urban markets. The deal adds to the rapid institutionalization of IOS as a recognized asset class.
Source: Commercial Observer, “PGIM Provides $103M Credit Facility to Alterra IOS Secured By 23 U.S. Assets,” by Brian Pascus, March 9, 2026.
Alterra IOS has received a passive, minority investment from Almanac, the private real estate arm of Neuberger, to support its rapidly growing industrial outdoor storage platform.
The strategic minority investment, made into Alterra’s management entity, is intended to fuel continued expansion and further institutionalize IOS as an asset class. Alterra is the nation’s largest owner and manager of IOS assets, having acquired more than 450 properties across 38 states. Berkshire Global Advisors advised Alterra on the transaction.
IOS continues to outperform and has proven to be very resilient in downturns. This investment enables Alterra to build on our existing capabilities and further strengthen our leadership position in the growing IOS market.Matthew Pfeiffer, Managing Partner & CIO, Alterra
Almanac — a Neuberger business unit that has committed more than $8.9 billion to 59 real estate companies — brings permanent capital and a track record of scaling real estate managers. The investment underscores rising institutional confidence in IOS, driven by e-commerce and infrastructure demand against structurally constrained supply.
Source: Alterra IOS press release, February 25, 2026.
Alterra IOS has acquired an 11-property industrial outdoor storage portfolio across the country, capping a year of major financing deals.
The portfolio spans markets including Chicago, Houston, San Francisco and northern New Jersey, totaling 31.6 usable acres. It is leased to Jack Doheny Companies, an equipment-rental firm based in Northville, Michigan; the sale price was not disclosed.
This portfolio is representative of our core thesis — acquiring well-positioned industrial outdoor storage assets with grade-level warehouses and supportive IOS zoning.Mark Gannon, SVP of Acquisitions, Alterra IOS (via CoStar)
The deal followed a year of headline financings for the Philadelphia-based investor — including $189 million from Blackstone Mortgage Trust, nearly $344 million from Truist and the Bank of Montreal, and a $150 million loan from Blue Owl — as the once-obscure sector gained mainstream institutional attention.
Source: CoStar, “Firm at center of US industrial outdoor storage expansion adds 11 properties,” by Ryan Ori, December 30, 2025.
Industrial outdoor storage is emerging as one of commercial real estate’s quiet outperformers, with demand and rents climbing as AI and data-center construction drive new uses for the land.
IOS covers paved or gravel land used to store equipment, vehicles, containers and supplies — essential back-office support for the movement of goods, with any structure limited to under 25% of the site. Once a mom-and-pop corner of commercial real estate, the sector is now drawing institutional capital as data-center developers use IOS lots to stage generators, tractors and other gear.
There’s $300 billion worth of IOS space that’s owned by businesses, ripe for investment.Leo Addimando, CEO, Alterra IOS (via CNBC)
Alterra IOS, which has acquired more than 406 sites nationwide, points to lean supply and rising rents as the sector’s defining tailwinds. With AI and quantum infrastructure accelerating, IOS is increasingly treated as critical staging ground rather than overlooked dirt.
Source: CNBC, “There’s an outperforming real estate sector hiding in plain sight,” by Diana Olick, November 5, 2025.
Wall Street’s biggest firms are pouring into industrial outdoor storage — the unglamorous lots that have become essential to logistics, trade and the data-center boom.
IOS lots — a few acres of gravel or asphalt near highways and ports — were long the province of small investors. Now the building boom for AI data centers, which need nearby space to stage millions of dollars of generators, tractors and trailers, has turned them into prime targets for institutional capital.
All of that generates direct and indirect demand for IOS.Leo Addimando, Managing Partner, Alterra (via The New York Times)
Blackstone committed $189 million to a fund with Alterra to buy 49 IOS sites across 22 states, while J.P. Morgan and others have launched their own ventures. Since 2020, IOS rents have jumped 123 percent — a return profile that helps explain why pension funds, banks and asset managers are moving in.
Source: The New York Times, “How Wall Street’s Big Bets on A.I. Are Driving Interest in Huge Parking Lots,” by Patrick Sisson, September 16, 2025.
Fundraising for Alterra IOS Venture III was completed within eight months, well ahead of the average time managers are in the market raising their funds.
Alterra Property Group’s latest fund has closed oversubscribed, with international investors providing capital for the first time, PERE has learned. The closing demonstrates demand for industrial outdoor storage continues to flourish.
The Philadelphia-based manager’s Alterra IOS Venture III was closed this week at $925 million, well beyond its original target of $750 million and hard-cap of $850 million, according to the firm. Park Madison Partners served as the exclusive placement agent. Its predecessor closed at $524 million, according to PERE data.
“Sometimes you have a product offering that the market is overly receptive to,” said Leo Addimando, chief executive of Alterra. “Within industrial, [investors] are seeking a little bit of diversification away from potentially just more and more big box warehousing – and they’re seeking more niche strategies.”
However, he added that while industrial outdoor storage is considered niche the firm estimates the value of the market to be approximately $200 billion, about 10 perfect of the value of the overall industrial market in the US.
Fundraising for the fund took eight months, notably quicker than today’s fundraising average time in market for vehicles in the sector.
“We launched in January of 2023, which was a very difficult time to raise capital in the real estate world and alternatives in general,” said Alterra chief investment officer Matthew Pfeiffer. “We were able to secure a number of meetings from a wide range of investors. The interest that we’ve been hearing in what we were doing was pretty high relative to the larger market.”
The limited partners in the fund were a mix of public and private pensions, endowments and foundations, sovereign wealth funds, asset managers, family offices and high-net-worth individuals. Three investors from outside the US committed capital to the firm for the first time since it launched the series in 2016.
“This particular strategy within US real estate has now become a bit more understood and sought after, again, not just by the US institutional investors, but international institutional investors,” Addimando said.
The focus for the series is to acquire infill properties in the US and Canada. The firm has completely deployed the capital from Alterra IOS Venture II, bringing Alterra to approximately $3 billion in assets under management.
Addimando added that access to outdoor storage for institutions and pensions funds can challenging given the size of typical individual deals. These are often $10 million or smaller, so a manager is required to aggregate them. “There are only so many managers in the space that have the institutional pedigree and a team already built,” he said.
Typically, IOS refers to land zoned for industrial use where a tenant would have outdoor storage requirements, such as vehicles, equipment or containers. So far there has been little institutional investment in the industrial sub-sector and Pfeiffer said that shortage, as well as limited available data, meant the market was fragmented and opaque.
Other firms are seeing similar success with the asset class. Last month, Catalyst Investment Partners beat the fundraising target for its second fund for industrial outdoor storage, closing Catalyst IOS Fund II at $186.9 million – above the intended target of $150 million.
Last year, Quilvest Capital Partners Axis IOS launched a joint venture with the view of acquiring and operating an approximately $500 million portfolio of industrial outdoor storage properties in the US.
By Miriam Hall, PERE News
A joint venture between Alterra IOS and Eco Materials bought a 5-acre site in Southwest Philadelphia for $5.75 million with plans to build a soil recycling facility.
Including the purchase price for the property at 6110 Passyunk Ave., the project is expected to cost $40 million. Construction began this month, and the facility is planned to be in operation by spring 2025.
The clean wash facility would accept non-hazardous contaminated soil, likely from construction companies that would otherwise dump it in a landfill. The soil would then go through a cleaning process, leaving up to 85% suitable for sale and reuse. The facility is designed to recycle up to 250 tons per hour.
Alterra IOS is the industrial outdoor storage arm of Alterra Property Group, and Eco Materials was founded last year to provide an environmentally friendly alternative for the disposal of waste from construction sites. Both companies are based in Philadelphia.
Alterra Property Group Managing Partner Leo Addimando and Eco Materials General Manager Andrew Paluszkiewicz said there are fewer than 10 facilities in the United States dedicated to this aggregate recycling process. Soil that is dug up during construction projects is required to be disposed of safely, and recycling the soil instead of dumping it benefits the environment, they said.
“The fact that we’re just taking all of our excavated dirt and we’re putting it in landfills next to plastic bottles and your trash from your garbage bin, it’s mind-blowing to me,” Addimando said. “Eighty percent of this or more could be recycled, put back into the construction ecosystem.”
Alterra Managing Partner Leo Addimando sees opportunity in a new soil recycling facility in Southwest Philadelphia.
Money for the project came from Alterra IOS’ recent $900 million fundraising round for industrial outdoor storage, Addimando said. A portion of the fund can be used for industrial projects other than outdoor storage.
While Alterra Property Group has established itself locally for converting offices to residential, its IOS division has expanded rapidly, acquiring properties across the country.
Paluszkiewicz is also president of American Sitework and has spent 20 years in the site work business. He began exploring aggregate recycling about two and a half years ago. Given his background, he immediately thought the process made sense.
“I never really took time to look at soil before this and realize the sand content and the stone content,” Paluszkiewicz said. “I was always just loading it and getting rid of it. But when you actually start to break it down, you realize there’s valuable aggregate within that bad dirt.”
Paluszkiewicz identified a land site and signed a lease with Passyunk Avenue Realty Enterprises, which owned the property before the joint venture bought it. He also secured permits to operate the facility. It was a risky process since Paluszkiewicz still needed a partner to help finance the project.
As soon as he was introduced to Addimando, the two shared the same vision.
While this type of recycling facility is rare in the United States, Addimando said there are hundreds in Europe. He and Paluszkiewicz have toured facilities in England and Northern Ireland.
“The United States is lagging what Europe’s been doing,” Paluszkiewicz said. “But as [environmental] regulations have gone up, it’s driven the need for this kind of equipment. I always say to my partners, someone’s going to build one of these. It might as well be us.”
The Passyunk Avenue property is near HRP Group’s Bellwether District, a 17.5 million-square-foot industrial and life sciences project at the former site of the Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery. It’s also near Falcon Concrete, which Addimando said is one of the largest concrete providers in Philadelphia.
Between those two operations and knowing how much dirt moves around Philadelphia regularly, Addimando and Paluszkiewicz are optimistic about the recycling facility.
“This is the first investment that I’ve seen that is a very sound and profitable business, and also is incredibly environmentally conscious and with no compromise of one to get the other,” Addimando said. “That, to me, is very attractive. It’s a very unique opportunity.”
By Paul Schwedelson – Reporter, Philadelphia Business Journal
