Newcastle Plans 413,000 SF Of Spec Industrial

FONTANA, CA-San Francisco-based developer Newcastle Partners Inc. plans a 413,120-sf speculative industrial development of three buildings for sale or lease on a 20-acre parcel that the company has just acquired, according to Lee & Associates. Don Kazanjian of Lee & Associates in Ontario, who is one of the listing agents and was one of the brokers in Newcastle’s acquisition of the land, tells GlobeSt.com that the project will consist of three buildings of 201,460 sf, 111,180 sf, and 100,480 sf that will feature 30-foot minimum clear heights, ESFR sprinklers, 60-foot concrete loading areas, 2,500 sf of mezzanine office space, dock-high and grade-level loading. Kazanjian and Jeff Smith, also of Lee’s Ontario office, are listing agents for the new buildings and represented Newcastle in its purchase of the property from Clearwater, FL-based Tech Data Corp. The development site is Marlay Avenue just a few blocks east of Etiwanda and the $25 million project is called the Newcastle Fontana Business Center. Newcastle expects to begin construction in the fourth quarter of this year and deliver the buildings in the first quarter of 2005, Kazanjian tells GlobeSt.com. The project is being designed by Douglas Franz Architects of Newport Beach, with Fullmer Construction of Ontario as the general contractor. Kazanjian says demand is especially strong for buildings in the size range Newcastle will deliver. While a number of Inland Empire projects offer small industrial buildings for sale to owner-users, businesses seeking distribution spaces of 100,000 sf to 200,000 sf have relatively few choices, he notes. Land for construction of such projects also is hard to come by in the Inland Empire. Kazanjian tells GlobeSt.com that the parcel Newcastle will develop became available because seller Tech Data Corp. no longer needed the land to build a warehouse that Tech Data had once contemplated on the property. Tech Data, one of the world’s largest distributors of computer products, bought the land about six years ago as part of a 40-acre parcel on which it expected to build two warehouses of aboug 400,000 sf each. The computer products distributor built one of the distribution centers, but with the shrinking size of many computer products, Kazanjian points out, Tech Data no longer needed the second warehouse.