LOS ANGELES—American Tire Distributors Inc. has signed a 20-year lease with Roll Real Estate Development for a 1-million-square-foot build-to-suit industrial facility at Paramount Logistics Park in Shafter, CA. The facility is scheduled to break ground this spring with occupancy scheduled for December 2014.

American Tire has occupied a 175,000-square-foot facility in the park since 2007. Last year, the company decided to expand, and signed a lease at the industrial park for a 350,000-square-foot facility, but soon realized it needed much more space. “American Tire had performed a very extensive analysis of their transportation logistics model before making a commitment for a 350,000-square-foot build-to-suit last year,” John Balestra, president of Roll Real Estate Development, tells GlobeSt.com. “When they determined the 350,000-square-foot building wasn't going to be large enough, they went back and re-explored their options. The Shafter, CA location is a superior location for a broad Western US scope of distribution, which is what they do. Their analysis confirmed that Shafter, CA was the optimum location.”

American Tire's 1-million-square-foot facility will sit on 45 acres and feature 234 trailer stalls and 201 loading docks. The property will have 10,000-square-feet of office space and a storage facility with 32-foot clear heights and ESFR fire sprinkler system. The 350,000-square-foot facility American Tire originally planned to occupy will become a speculative building, available for lease in May.

The Paramount Logistics Park has 1,625 acres of entitled industrial land. “We have in-place entitlements for another 26 million square feet, and we can provide absolute certainty of execution and speed to market because there are no discretionary land-use approvals required,” says Balestra. The speed-to-market and the central distribution location compelled American Tire to sign the unusually long, 20-year lease term.

Roll Real Estate is also working on a 1.7-million-square-foot facility for Ross Dress for Less. The facility is expected to be complete in the third quarter of this year, and will generate 1,500 jobs in the area. “When you add these three projects up—the Ross building, the spec building and the American Tire building—that is over 3 million square feet of industrial space under construction all in one location coming out of the ground concurrently. I don't know of another project that has that much activity in the Western US,” he says.

Industrial leases and developments of this size are rare in the Los Angeles area and Valley. “Even in the Inland Empire, you do about five or six per year,” says Balestra. For perspective, last year GlobeSt.com reported that Pacific Industrial purchased 39 acres from the City of Bell, CA to build a 550,000-square-foot facility. At the time, the deal was noted as one of the largest land sales in the area in the last decade.