TEJON RANCH, CA-The Bakersfield region will have a new shopping center soon as Tejon Ranch Co. and the Rockefeller Group team up to build a premier outlet center at one of California’s busiest highway junctures, where Interstate 5 and Highway 99 meet just south of Bakersfield. The joint venture has entered into a letter of intent to partner in the center’s development and is targeting a Spring 2014 opening date.
A spokesperson for Tejon Ranch Co. tells GlobeSt.com that Phase I of the development will hold 322,827 square feet of retail space, and Phase II will hold 154,322 square feet, totaling 477,149 square feet at build out on the 55-acre site. The partnership declined to reveal the estimated construction costs for the project as well as the specific retailers being targeted, but the spokesperson did tell GlobeSt.com “we’re talking with all the brand leaders in outlet retail, and their response to both the market and the site has been very enthusiastic.”
According to Robert Stine, president and CEO of Tejon Ranch Co., the Rockefeller Group has “already proven to be excellent and astute partners in our industrial real estate development efforts, and we have every confidence that together, we’ll develop one of the country’s most successful outlet centers.”
The Outlets at Tejon Ranch will serve as the primary outlet-retail offering for the 3.2 million residents living in Bakersfield and the Northwest Los Angeles County communities of Santa Clarita, Valencia, Castaic, Lancaster and Palmdale, as well as the millions of travelers on I-5 who visit the joint venture’s Tejon Ranch Commerce Center. Tom McCormick, a SVP for the Rockefeller Group’s development division who oversees the company’s Western region initiatives says, “Tejon Ranch Commerce Center has already proven to be an extremely successful retail location, and the Outlets at Tejon Ranch’s primary fixed consumer markets of Bakersfield and Northwest Los Angeles County represent a rich opportunity for outlet retailers.”
Infrastructure work at the site has already begun, and leasing of the center is being handled by EWB Development.
As GlobeSt.com had exclusively learned and previously reported, on the heels of Caterpillar’s 46-acre buy here, in March Dollar General signed on for 439,000 square feet at the Tejon Ranch Commerce Center. Dollar General will use the facility to support its expansion into California. The discount retailer has more than 9,800 stores and has California as its 39th state, with plans to open 50 stores throughout the state in 2012. The distribution center at the Tejon Ranch Commerce Center will be the company’s 11th distribution center in its cross-country supply chain network.
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Carrie Rossenfeld
Carrie Rossenfeld is a reporter for the San Diego and Orange County markets on GlobeSt.com and a contributor to Real Estate Forum. She was a trade-magazine and newsletter editor in New York City before moving to Southern California to become a freelance writer and editor for magazines, books and websites. Rossenfeld has written extensively on topics including commercial real estate, running a medical practice, intellectual-property licensing and giftware. She has edited books about profiting from real estate and has ghostwritten a book about starting a home-based business.
