Getahn Ward

USA TODAY NETWORK – Tennessee

Southeast trucking company Western Express Inc. has sold its nearly 50-acre corporate headquarters campus in West Nashville for $15 million.

A general partnership with Nashville businessman Pete DeLay as managing partner was the buyer of the property at 7131 or 7135 Centennial Place. It is located in the Cockrill Bend industrial area near the Metro Nashville Airport Authority's John C. Tune Airport.

"Cockrill Bend just continues to prove that in-town industrial locations are so hard to find and so valuable for their location," said Buist Richardson, a broker with the Nashville office of commercial real estate firm Avison Young, who wasn't involved with the deal.

Delay, an executive with water and drainage pipe and products manufacturer Forterra Pipe & Precast, is no stranger to real estate deals. In 2015, an entity that he leads paid $24.5 million for the 12.37-acre property at 2501 Powell Ave. in Nashville's One Hundred Oaks area that's home to a CarMax used car dealership.

Delay couldn't be reach for comments Friday about purchase of the Western Express property. Officials of the trucking company didn't return calls seeking comments about its future plans.

Centennial Group GP, the entity through which the Delay-led group bought the West Nashville property, funded the purchase in part with an $8.1 million loan from Nashville-based Pinnacle Bank.

Landscaping Supply business Boral Bricks Inc. and wholesale grocer Sysco Nashville LLC are among other companies with operations in the Centennial Place area.

Reach Getahn Ward at gward@tennessean.com or 615-726-5968 and on Twitter @getahn.