"Tramontina made a corporate decision that they own enough real estate and want to lease space from now on," says Ross Matthews, vice president for ProLogis. Tramontina-USA will lease back the facility for the long term, he says.

The ProLogis building is one of two facilities currently under construction for Tramontina-USA. The cookware company, which is one of Fort Bend County's top employers, broke ground just months ago on a 298,000-sf manufacturing plant across the street from ProLogis Park at 12955 W. Airport Blvd. The facility, which is estimated to cost between $16 million and $20 million, is expected to bring 100 jobs to the area.

Matthews tells GlobeSt.com that 234,000-sf build-to-suit kicks off development of the 39-acre ProLogis Park Sugar Land Corporate Center, which is located near the intersection of US Highways 59 and 90A in the far southwest submarket. The ProLogis facility, which is expected to be complete in the first quarter 2005, is a cross-dock design with 28-foot clear height. The project cost is still being tabulated, but similar distribution warehouses cost $35 per sf, putting the value of the ProLogis' Tramontina-USA building at roughly $8 million. With the two buildings under construction, Tramontina-USA, which counts Wal-Mart, Costco, Sam's Club and Williams-Sonoma as customers, will have more than one million sf of distribution space in Fort Bend County.