Brookfield is officially putting its massive Cheongna Logistics Center on the market — and despite South Korea’s tight capital markets, the site tours tell a different story. Dozens of investors have been touring the sprawling complex, curious to see if the high-spec facility can command the KRW 1 trillion (USD 720 million) price tag Brookfield is targeting.

The building, at over 430,000 square meters (approx. 4.6 million sq ft), is now one of the country’s largest modern warehouses. Coupang — Korea’s biggest e-commerce player — is locked in as a long-term anchor tenant, alongside Emart24 for cold storage.

But the big question is whether Brookfield’s aggressive repositioning can override market caution in an environment where debt remains tight and big-ticket logistics trades have slowed to a trickle.

When Brookfield acquired the project in early 2023 via a forward purchase from KP Logistics PFV, the timing raised eyebrows. Incheon’s warehouse submarket was already reeling from oversupply and climbing vacancy rates, and a single mega-facility of this scale looked risky to many.

But insiders say Brookfield didn’t just sit back and hope. Instead, the firm leaned into hands-on asset management — securing Coupang’s lease early, hedging cold storage risk by landing Emart24, and then converting the remaining cold storage floors back to ambient warehouse use to match shifting demand. The first floor — typically the most coveted due to direct dock access — was prioritized for dry storage to capture tenants fast.

An advisor familiar with the deal noted:
"Plenty of investors outsource this work, but Brookfield does it themselves — from leasing to design tweaks. That’s why they got ahead of the vacancy risk when everyone else was worried about cold storage demand falling off a cliff."

With public bidding slated for early July, potential buyers are weighing whether they can raise the KRW 300–500 billion (USD 220–370 million) in equity needed to win.

There’s also chatter that big domestic core fund managers — like Mirae Asset, fresh off winning Korea Post’s KRW 600 billion core mandate — could enter the fray if they see the right yield spread and lease-up certainty.

One local fund manager who joined the site tour summed it up:
"No one disputes this is one of the best logistics assets in Korea — the specs, the tenants, the scale. But the market right now is about who has dry powder and the guts to deploy it at this size."

The outcome will also be a signal of how prime logistics deals can clear in a market still digesting a cycle of cheap money, overbuild, and shifting tenant demand.

Brookfield has shown it can pivot fast — the question now is whether the market is ready to follow.

This story first appeared in Corebeat, June 16, 2025.