Chicago Public School Teachers’ Pension & Retirement Fund committed $40 million to Clarion Partners’ Lion Industrial Trust and $10 million to Industry Capital’s IC Berkeley Partners III, according to Carmen Heredia-Lopez, the pension fund’s chief investment officer.
The commitments are the $9.7 billion pension fund’s first industrial-focused real estate allocations, although its does have exposure through its existing real estate mangers, Ms. Heredia-Lopez said in an e-mail.
“As part of our thoughtful asset allocation, we like to maintain an efficient mix of assets to maximize returns,” Ms. Heredia-Lopez said. “Within the real estate asset class, our exposure to the industrial property type was underweight vs. the benchmark. These allocations will bring us up to be in line with the benchmark.”
Both the Clarion trust, an open-end commingled fund, and the IC fund focus on U.S.-based investments.
The commitments are the result of an RFP the pension fund issued in March.
Townsend Group, the pension fund’s real estate investment consultant, assisted with the search.
The pension fund has a 12% allocation to real estate, including a 2.5% allocation to real estate investment trusts.
