Answers to the questions we get most often about Yukon Real Estate Partners, cold storage and food-logistics real estate, and Basecamp, our cost-mitigation service for food companies that need to build. Updated October 2026.
Yukon Real Estate Partners is a fully integrated real estate investment and development company that works only on cold storage and food-logistics assets: cold storage warehouses, food processing and manufacturing plants, and food distribution buildings. Marty Khait and Oliver Davis-Urman founded the firm in 2018. It is headquartered in Austin, Texas, with a second office in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey.
The team has developed and exited 3.5 million square feet of cold storage, worth more than $350 million at disposition, and has entitled or acquired $1.86 billion of assets. The team carries about 80 cumulative years of experience in food and industrial real estate. Clients and tenants have included Coca-Cola, CJ Logistics, Giant Eagle, Flora Food Group, and Rich Products.
Three things. First, we only do food and cold chain real estate, so we understand refrigeration, temperature zones, food-safety compliance, and how a food company actually moves product through a building. Second, we stay involved from site selection through ground-up development, leasing, and asset management. Third, we run a developer-led RFP process in which we find the land, design the building, and then run a competitive bid among warehouse operators on the manufacturer's behalf. We also operate FindColdStorage.com, which gives us data on national and independent cold storage operators across the country.
Marty Khait, Co-Founder and Co-Managing Principal, was previously Head of Agency Leasing for WeWork in New York and holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Drexel University. Oliver Davis-Urman, Co-Founder and Co-Managing Principal, came from WeWork Management, FanAngel, and Madison Square Garden and holds an MBA from the University of Maryland. Mark Winter-Gitelson, Principal and President, has nearly two decades of experience and more than $700 million in transactions, with a BBA from American University. The wider team includes Axel Anderson (Head of Development), Ken Henderson (Director of Construction), Gerald Logan (Director of Capital Markets), and Zac Silverstein (Senior Manager, Development).
Nationally, with projects completed or under way in Texas, Kansas, Ohio, Florida, and the Northeast. Our offices are in Austin, Texas and Berkeley Heights, New Jersey. The Northeast, meaning northern New Jersey, New York City, and Long Island, is a particular focus for new work.
Email info@yrep.com. Our Austin office is at 4229 N FM 620, Suite 330, Austin, TX 78734. Our New Jersey office is at 200 Connell Dr, Suite 1C5E, Berkeley Heights, NJ 07922.
Ground-up build-to-suit development, acquisition and renovation of existing cold storage buildings, sale-leaseback transactions, fee development where the client owns the outcome and we run the project, project management, financing and capital-stack structuring, site-selection and lease consulting, and pallet-space procurement through FindColdStorage.com. Since 2026 these are delivered through Basecamp, described below.
A food manufacturer partners with us to secure land and design a building. We then issue a request for proposals to third-party warehouse operators, who compete for the service contract to run the facility. We finance and build the building. The manufacturer gets guaranteed service terms and competitive operating economics without putting its own capital into land or construction. On the Flora Food Group project in Kansas, five national operators competed and CJ Logistics America won.
No. We can bring in a third-party logistics operator to run the building so you stay focused on production. You can also operate it yourself if that fits your business. The choice is yours and we will model both.
Usually with a plant-attached warehouse: a cold storage building connected directly to your plant by conveyor, pallet elevator, or shared dock, so finished goods move straight from the line into storage without a truck in between. That removes shuttle trucking, double handling, and the cost of a separate 3PL hub. Our New Century, Kansas project for Flora Food Group works this way.
Yes. Much of the cold storage in the United States is 40 or more years old. We buy and renovate older buildings when the location is right, replacing refrigeration, insulated panels, doors, lighting, and fire protection while keeping tenants in place where possible. Columbus, Ohio and North Miami, Florida are two examples.
Yes, through a sale-leaseback. You sell the building to us and lease it back on a long-term lease, which frees the equity for a new production line, an acquisition, or working capital while your operations stay put.
Mostly build-to-suit or pre-leased. Our Burleson, Texas project was half pre-leased and half speculative and leased up. In the current market, with cold storage vacancy at a 20-year high, we favor build-to-suit, owner-user, and renovation of existing stock over new speculative supply.
We are the bridge between a manufacturer's demand and an operator's expertise. Operators compete in our RFPs for long-term service contracts in purpose-built facilities, and we partner with operators on new sites they want to grow into. If you run a cold storage operation and want to be considered, write to info@yrep.com.
Basecamp is a holistic cost-mitigation service from Yukon that value-engineers construction for food-logistics occupiers. We built it for our own cold storage projects and now offer it to clients and partners. Six functions that usually sit with six separate firms are combined into one contract: owner's representation, construction management, project management, procurement management, value engineering, and fee development.
Yukon 3.0 is the name for how the company works today. When we started in 2018, food-logistics real estate was a relationship business in a corner of industrial that large capital had not yet organized. That changed: the share of investors pursuing cold storage went from about 7% to 22% between 2019 and 2021, the handful of specialist buyers became more than 100 investment groups, and the cap-rate discount to dry industrial largely closed. We cannot out-capitalize the institutions that arrived, so we compete on cost instead. Yukon 3.0 puts Basecamp at the front of every engagement and lets the client's own numbers decide whether the right structure is a build-to-suit, a fee development, an acquisition, a sale-leaseback, or something else.
A food company needs a new facility roughly once every seven to fifteen years, so it has no institutional memory of how to build one. Each of its three usual routes has a flaw. Take a build-to-suit from a developer: fast and clean, but a development spread is embedded in the rent and you never learn what the building actually cost. Fee-develop a site yourself: you own every cost and schedule risk, usually without in-house expertise. Self-perform the expansion: an operations leader does it alongside their real job and assembles vendors piecemeal, which is where the biggest overruns live. None of the three gives you an accountable party whose own economics improve when the budget comes down. That is the gap Basecamp fills.
Five methods, applied together from the design phase forward. Holistic value engineering: identify the function each component performs, then find the lowest-cost way to deliver exactly that function, before the drawings harden. Generic equivalents: alternate-manufacturer dock levelers, refrigeration, racking, HVAC, and generators at the same functional spec and warranty. Direct procurement: long-lead materials and equipment bought straight from the manufacturer, so the general contractor installs and the markup layers come out. Vertical integration: sitework performed in-house through Trailhead Site-Work. Creative capital stack: underused debt structures, state and federal incentive programs, and an explicit own-versus-lease decision. Most developers run one of these. Almost none run all five, and none of them requires scale, which is why a larger competitor's balance sheet does not close the gap.
A structured process for identifying what function a component performs and then finding the lowest-cost way to deliver that exact function. It started at General Electric during World War II and has been required by federal law on federally funded highway projects since 1995. The job plan runs in six steps: gather information, break every system into its function, brainstorm alternatives, rank them on cost, risk, and life-cycle performance, develop the strongest into real proposals, and present them for a decision. It does not mean a cheaper-feeling building. The dollars come out of invisible, purely functional systems: over-specified structure, redundant back-of-house equipment, branded components nobody sees. Either the building costs less or the same money shows up where it can be seen. The occupier picks.
In the one case we can share, a New Jersey e-commerce food distributor received a single bid for a freezer expansion. We leveled it against our own budget on equal scope and priced the building 20.1% below the bid per square foot, about $1.29 million lower at equal size. Three hidden costs explained the gap: markup layers (metals, electrical, and fire alarm were bid $628,750 above our direct-procurement budget), over-specification (envelope, fire suppression, and refrigeration carried $243,750 of branded premium), and scope gaps (the bid excluded $679,423 of legal, contingency, permitting, and report costs that would have come back as change orders). Results on any given project depend on the baseline, the scope, and how early we are engaged.
With a budget review. If a construction quote came in higher than expected, send it to us and we will level it against our own budget on equal scope. From there, an intake session with your team covers program, schedule, and any bids or budgets in hand, and produces a client playbook: line-item savings estimates tied to your own baseline, generic and client-specific strategies, a suggested capital stack with the own-versus-lease call run neutrally, and a rendering and site map. Engagement follows, with value engineering, procurement, and delivery under one contract and savings measured against the baseline captured at intake.
No. One intake can lead to six different structures: Yukon as developer, acquisition of an existing asset, fee development, project management only, sale-leaseback, or financing. A traditional developer knows the answer before the conversation starts because only one structure pays them. We have no stake in which structure is chosen, so it is selected on your numbers, not sold. The same applies to own-versus-lease: a company compounding at 25% inside its own business may be right to lease even at a higher occupancy cost, and the analysis runs without a stake in which answer wins.
A separate company in the Yukon family that performs sitework and site-related subcontracting in-house. Sitework is a large share of any project budget and on a traditional job it is subbed out through several layers of markup. Doing it ourselves captures that margin for the client. Trailhead is a sibling brand to Basecamp, not a variant of it.
Yes, though the approach shifts. Savings are easiest to measure against a bid or budget you already hold. Where there is none, we agree on a baseline with you at the start of the engagement and measure against that.
A cold storage building is an industrial building engineered to hold product at controlled temperatures, from coolers at 35 degrees Fahrenheit to blast freezers well below zero. That means industrial refrigeration systems, insulated metal panel walls and ceilings, vapor barriers, under-slab heating to prevent frost heave, specialized dock doors and seals, and backup power. A dry warehouse is a shell. A cold box is a machine. Development means finding the land, securing power, designing the thermal envelope and refrigeration around the tenant's product mix, and building it, usually for a specific food company.
The average U.S. cold storage facility is about 40 years old, and much of that stock cannot support modern clear heights, automation, or current refrigerant and food-safety requirements. Building new is expensive: roughly $130 to $350 per square foot for cold storage against $85 to $150 for a dry warehouse. Meanwhile demand for fresh, frozen, and online grocery keeps growing. The result is a large gap between what food companies need and what exists.
In the near term, yes, in some markets. Cold storage entered speculative territory for the first time in about 30 years during the pandemic. Roughly 19 speculative projects totaling 5.2 million square feet were delivered across 2022 and 2023 and another 2.2 million square feet in 2025. Capacity is up about 14.5% since 2021 against demand up about 5%, vacancy reached 7.7% in the first half of 2026, a 20-year high, and legacy buildings carry most of that vacancy. Elevated costs and longer timelines are pushing new projects toward build-to-suit, owner-user, and pre-leased deals. That is exactly the occupier Basecamp serves, and a cost advantage is worth more in an oversupplied market than a tight one.
Energy, downtime, and compliance. Old insulated panels and doors leak cold, and electricity is the largest operating cost in a freezer. Aging compressors fail without warning and product loss follows. Older systems often run refrigerants that are being phased down under EPA rules, and older layouts make FSMA 204 traceability harder. At our North Miami building, new ceilings and doors cut electricity use about 9% through Miami's hottest year on record, even as the utility's rate per kilowatt-hour rose about 30% over our hold.
If you produce enough volume to fill a building, attached usually wins. Every pallet that leaves a plant for a remote warehouse is trucked, unloaded, put away, picked, and trucked again before it reaches a customer. A plant-attached warehouse removes that shuttle leg and the handling with it. A regional hub makes more sense when volume is spread across several plants or when the operator's network is the value.
Power first: a large freezer can need several megawatts, and utility lead times for new service can run years. Then labor, since cold storage is labor-intensive and the work is hard. Then logistics: highway access, drive time to your plants and customers, and rail where it matters. Then the site itself: soils, drainage, truck court depth, trailer parking, and zoning that allows 24-hour operations and refrigeration equipment.
The federal phase-down of high-global-warming-potential HFC refrigerants, with major steps in 2025 and 2026, means new systems should be designed around compliant refrigerants such as ammonia, CO2, or low-GWP blends. Buying or leasing a building with legacy refrigeration can mean an expensive conversion inside the lease term. We design new builds around compliant systems and factor conversion cost into any renovation.
Rail moves bulk product at a lower cost per ton-mile than trucking and hedges against truck-rate volatility and driver shortages. For a food manufacturer shipping full railcars of frozen or shelf-stable product to distant markets, a rail spur at the warehouse can remove a transload step entirely. Our New Century, Kansas facility is rail-served.
Working in a freezer is tough. Buildings designed with heated break rooms, good lighting, ergonomic dock equipment, dock shelters that keep the cold in and weather out, and layouts that limit time inside the freezer are easier to staff and keep staffed. In a tight labor market the building itself is a recruiting tool.
For a ground-up build-to-suit, plan on 18 to 30 months from the decision to occupancy: several months for site selection and control, six to twelve months for design, entitlement, and permitting, and twelve to eighteen months of construction. Power availability and refrigeration lead times are the usual critical path. Our Burleson, Texas building was delivered in 14 months during the pandemic. Renovating an existing building is faster, often under a year.
Roughly $130 to $350 per square foot for cold storage against $85 to $150 for dry, depending on temperature zones, clear height, automation, and market. Converting existing dry stock to cold runs about $100 to $150 per square foot, which is why buying and retrofitting well-located older buildings can beat ground-up in an oversupplied market.
People eat in every economy, and most of what they eat passes through a refrigerated warehouse. Demand tracks population and food consumption rather than discretionary spending, tenants sign long leases because moving a refrigerated operation is costly, and the specialized building limits new competition. That said, it is not immune: the recent speculative wave shows that supply can overshoot.
A refrigerated warehouse, sometimes called a public refrigerated warehouse or PRW, stores product for many customers over longer periods and charges by the pallet. A cold distribution center is built for throughput: product arrives, is sorted or picked, and leaves within hours or days, usually for a single retailer, foodservice distributor, or manufacturer. Distribution centers need more dock doors and staging space; storage warehouses need more racking and density.
Getting perishable product from a regional facility to a store, restaurant, or front door quickly and at the right temperature. Online grocery and meal delivery have pushed demand for smaller cold buildings close to population centers, where land is scarce and expensive. Our North Miami building, 22 small freezer and cooler bays under a mile from I-95, served exactly that market for independent importers, distributors, and processors.
Burleson, Texas: 420,000 square feet of Class A cold storage with 48-foot clear heights, half pre-leased and half speculative, delivered in 14 months and sold to Invesco in 2022. New Century, Kansas: a 300,000 square foot rail-served warehouse attached to Flora Food Group's production plant by pallet elevator and conveyor, on a 99-year ground lease, operated by CJ Logistics America after a competitive RFP. Columbus, Ohio: a 105,000 square foot freezer built by a national grocer, acquired in disrepair with refrigeration and fire protection decommissioned, renovated and leased to a regional grocery distribution center. Leesburg, Florida: a 100,000 square foot facility leased to a Fortune 100 beverage manufacturer. North Miami, Florida: a 32,000 square foot small-bay cold storage building with 22 convertible freezer and cooler bays, renovated at full occupancy and sold in 2026. Seguin, Texas: a 290,000 square foot project delivering in the fourth quarter of 2026.
Flora needed to consolidate about 35,000 pallet positions and stop shuttling product to off-site warehouses. We secured a 99-year ground lease next to the plant at New Century AirCenter, designed a 300,000 square foot rail-served warehouse connected to the plant by a conveyor bridge and pallet elevator, and ran a competitive RFP among five national operators. CJ Logistics America won the contract. The result nearly eliminated off-site transportation cost for Flora.
We bought 500 NE 185th Street in March 2021 for $4.1 million, below replacement cost, and sold it in 2026 for $11.4 million, fully leased, after a five and a half year hold. Along the way we rebuilt most of the 22 bays while keeping the building 100% occupied, holding tenant product in refrigerated containers on site. Renovation lessons: run one temperature per bay, because a cooler front and freezer back in the same room destroyed 19 of 22 ceilings through condensation; replace ceilings first, since that is where insulation loss and safety risk concentrate; and install pressure-regulating valves so any bay can run as freezer or cooler. Business lessons: price per pallet, not per square foot; tenants accept rent increases they can see being reinvested; and keep the building engineer, who knew more about the building than anyone.
Food and beverage manufacturers that need storage attached to or near production, third-party logistics operators that run multi-customer refrigerated warehouses, grocery and foodservice distributors, and, at the small-bay end, independent importers, distributors, and processors who need 1,000 to 2,000 square feet of their own freezer with 24-hour access.