INDIANAPOLIS—In the past few years, vast distribution buildings have sprouted on the flatlands just outside Indianapolis. The market has improved so much that, as reported yesterday in GlobeSt.com, firms like Opus Development Company, LLC, have once again started to build new facilities on a speculative basis. And Douglas J. Swain, vice president and general manager at Opus' Indianapolis office, strongly believes the market can support new projects such as Airwest 12 and Airwest 13, two speculative warehouses with a total of 924,530-square-feet that they plan to build this year at the Plainfield Business Center in suburban Plainfield.

“If you look at this market, there has been an average of 2.5-million-square-feet of [annual] absorption,” he says, and this heightened activity gets “driven by new, modern bulk spaces.” In the first quarter of 2013 alone, the area saw 761,095-square-feet of absorption, according to Colliers, much of it in the Plainfield submarket southwest of the city. “When we saw that, we felt that the time was right to put this type of product on the market.”

Each of the new Airwest buildings will have 36' clear ceiling heights, T5 lighting and 45 to 48 docking spaces, making them comparable to the most recent additions to the Indianapolis market. Furthermore, Swain says that they can divide these new warehouses to serve smaller tenants. Several of the developments recently launched or finished, such as Prologis/Browning Investments' 622,440-square-foot building in the AirTech Business Park, now leased entirely to Hartz Pet Products, were meant to serve large users. But “the sweet spot for most Plainfield users is 200,000 to-300,000-square-foot spaces.”