(Read more on the industrial market.)

MOHAVE COUNTY, AZ-Six weeks after buying 150 acres, Becknell Development LLC has broken ground on the Tri-State Business Park. The first project for the $100-million industrial park is a 330,000-sf build-to-suit distribution center leased for the long term to Dallas-based marketing company Freeman Cos.

The 2.2-million-sf industrial park at Vanderslice and Reservation roads is Chicago-based Becknell's second development in the area. "We just really liked this location and think it's on the cutting edge of the next distribution area," explains Becknell's Paul W. Thurston. He adds that the appeal of the area is the cost of land as well as its location near California.

Thurston tells GlobeSt.com that he'd come across the land for Becknell's second development while searching for a good site for Freeman, which wanted to establish a regional distribution center in the West. "We liked this site because it had the best of everything we were looking for, from a low land basis, to a good location, to excellent facilities," Thurston says. Other factors prompting the land acquisition from a private seller in Bullhead included an adjacent power sub-station, access to a fiber optics grid and on-site water availability.