Doyle Toups, senior vice president with the Houston office of Grubb & Ellis Co., tells GlobeSt.com that developers Gordon Westergren, Scott Monroe and Frank DeLape have just acquired 14 acres at 1500 Powell Rd. to go along with 32 bought in midyear 2003 and the deed will soon roll to another 44 acres. Toups says the group also has put a contract on an abutting 176 acres for future development. The 14 acres were acquired from LaPorte Ltd., a Houston-based investment group.

As the land assembly continues, the team is into the final negotiating stage with locally based Frontier Logistics to be operating partner and developer of a $9-million, 23-line rail yard, ticketed for 32 acres served by Union Pacific. Toups says the logistics firm--a handler of intermodal transfers, plastics packaging, warehousing and distribution--will wear a second hat, that of a tenant for 100,000 sf in the park's first building, which breaks ground in late May. The $22.5-million, 250,000-sf building, with 28-ft clear heights, will deliver in November.

Toups says the response for leasing space in the project, tagged at 34 cents per sf triple net, has been so overwhelming that he's jumpstarted the campaign for a second structure. The 90-acre plan calls for three warehouses, all 250,000 sf.