Clarion Lion Industrial Trust

Overview

Clarion Lion Industrial Trust ("CLIT" or "LIT") is an open-end, core-plus industrial real estate fund sponsored and managed by Clarion Partners LLC. The vehicle is organized as Lion Industrial Trust, a Maryland statutory trust/stock corporation formed on October 8, 2002 (SEC CIK 1212214), and its Form D filings list its issuer address as Clarion Partners' New York offices at 230 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10169 (note: a Bloomberg LEI record shows an older/legacy registered address of 335 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10017 — likely a stale LEI entry rather than a current HQ discrepancy, since the SEC Form D address is more recent, filed as of 2024-12-31). It is structured as a non-listed, evergreen REIT-style vehicle with no fixed term, raising capital under Regulation D exemptions (Rule 506(b), Sections 3(c) and 3(c)(6) of the Investment Company Act) rather than as a registered public offering; a 2024-era Form D/A lists approximately 214 investors of record, with Ernst & Young as auditor. Form D filings also name Clarion Partners-affiliated directors/officers including William Krauch, Stephen Furnary, Hugh Macdonnell, David Gilbert, Stephen Latimer, James Hendricks, John Killian, and David Confer. Strategy: the fund acquires, develops, manages, and strategically sells industrial warehouse, distribution, and big-box logistics properties (existing operating assets plus selective new development/land) concentrated in roughly 25 major U.S. industrial and distribution markets. Trade press (Institutional Real Estate Inc., Real Assets/IPE) has consistently classified it as an open-end core-plus industrial strategy, distinct from Clarion's diversified core vehicle, variously branded Clarion Lion Properties Fund / Clarion Lion Property Trust (CLPF) — confirmed as a genuinely separate fund: Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation's ~$157m holding and $25m redemption (part of a $96.5m total redemption round, portfolio-rebalancing driven) were in CLPF, not CLIT, per Real Assets/IPE reporting. Investor base: the fund has drawn commitments from a broad roster of U.S. public pension plans, including the New York State Common Retirement Fund ($300m commitment reported May 2022 — this was one leg of NYSCRF's broader $370m industrial real estate allocation that period, the other $70.1m going to a separate account with Heitman for the Rickenbacker West Logistics Center in Ohio, unrelated to CLIT), Alameda County Employees' Retirement Association ($35m add-on, March 2022), Oklahoma Municipal Retirement Fund ($30m), the Michigan Office of Retirement Services, the Teachers' Retirement System of Louisiana, and the San Jose Police and Fire Department Retirement Plan / San Jose Police and Fire Retiree Health Care Trust Fund. As with many open-end core/core-plus vehicles, the fund faced significant redemption pressure in the post-2022 rate-hiking cycle: Real Assets (IPE) reported outstanding investor redemption requests reaching roughly $2 billion (€1.8bn) as of a July 15, 2024 article, even as industrial fundamentals in the fund's target sector remained comparatively strong versus office and other property types. No more recent (2025/2026) public reporting on the redemption queue's resolution was located. Fund size: PitchBook lists total fund size at approximately $18.4 billion, consistent with the size figure supplied for this profile; this appears to reflect gross asset value/NAV of the evergreen vehicle rather than a fixed, one-time capital raise, since the fund continuously issues and redeems interests. A secondary aggregator (aum13f.com) displays a "$12.7B" figure paired with the 2002-12-13 initial filing date, which is internally inconsistent (a fund cannot have been $12.7B in size at formation) and appears to be a scraper/date-pairing artifact on that site rather than a credible alternative fund-size figure — not used as a correction. No independently corroborated target size, final-close date (the fund is evergreen/open-end with no fixed close), specific IRR/TVPI/performance metrics (PitchBook holds this data behind its paywall; not found in free public sources), dedicated fund website/LinkedIn page, or named property/asset-level holdings were locatable in public sources within the scope of this research; those fields remain NONE_FOUND rather than estimated.

Key Facts

Fund type

Open-End Core-Plus Real Estate

Vintage year

2002

Strategy

Core-Plus, Industrial

Managed by

Clarion Partners

Fund size

USD 18.4B

Related on NestLens

• Clarion Partners · Capital Manager (GP)