Ecommerce users have driven the need for large-box industrial facilities over 500,000 square feet—but that isn't all. The specs and features at these new class-A industrial facilities have also grown tremendously, from 37-foot clear heights to 185-foot concrete truck courts. Trammell Crow Co. recently completed three spec industrial projects totaling 2.4 million square feet, and went big with their specs to target ecommerce and distribution center users.
“Buildings need to be more efficient with higher clear heights, and that was for all different users, not just ecommerce users,” Tom Bak, senior managing director at Trammell Crow Co. in the firm's Orange County office, tells GlobeSt.com. “New facilities were needed because existing buildings had specs like 24-foot clear heights. There is so much more efficiency in today's specs, with 37-foot clear heights. The material handling systems have changed as well, whether it be through traditional racking systems to, in many cases, robotics.”
Of course, increased building sizes accommodate these larger specs, which increase efficiency. Bak says that in the 1980s, building sizes averaged 25,000 to 50,000 square feet. Today, the average new development size is more than 500,000 square feet. “A lot of that was really driven by the reconfiguration of the whole supply chain network,” he says. For that reason, a lot of the new development projects that fit the needs of ecommerce users are taking place in the Inland Empire, including the company's three recent projects.
While the Inland Empire is the stopping ground for new development, mainly because of the lack of availability of land, conceivably these specs could be incorporated into an infill project. “Due to the technological advances, the ability to increase the clear height is possible in any market,” says Bak. “The difference that the larger buildings have to offer really have to do with the changing logistics business where truck courts need to be 185-feet minimum and the ability to use those yard distances allow for much more efficient loading and unloading of trucks. In the infill markets, the truck courts are much smaller and used by smaller trucks. The buildings could be effectively built, but it is hard to find infill land that can accommodate more than 500,000 square feet of building area. For these large sophisticated users, the infill markets are just used for local deliveries.”
Even in the more accessible Inland Empire markets, like Riverside, land availability is difficult to find. To build new projects at scale that can accommodate these features, TCC has looked at assembling sites and working within the city. “Land is often requiring assemblages, and then you go through a fairly lengthy entitlement process,” says Bak. “We look to establish long-term relationships with the cities that we work in and we really do build sustainable communities. Our success has really been because we are thought of as a community based developer.”
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Kelsi Maree Borland
