FONTANA, CA—Pacific Industrial has broken ground on a 751,024-square-foot industrial building at its Sierra Pacific Center in Fontana, GlobeSt.com reports exclusively. The new building will double the size of the center, creating a 1.5-million-square-foot industrial campus. Phase II of the development, this second building, will be complete in the first quarter of 2016.

“Each building is being delivered essentially a year apart from the other, which is helpful from a planning standpoint and each building can operate completely stand alone or by using private drive aisles we can create a world class, state of the art campus for one company,” Dan Floriani, co-founder of Pacific Industrial, tells GlobeSt.com. “There are many examples of large Fortune 500 size companies occupying large buildings right next to each other for obvious reasons. There are synergies with employee pools, management and overall logistics. Some companies even prefer having two separate buildings as well for product risk mitigation.”  

Located at 5885 Sierra Avenue, the class-A facility will feature 36-foot minimum height clearance, 100 percent concrete truck courts with depths up to 310 feet and a cross-dock configuration with 114 dock high loading doors. It will be built to LEED standards with EV charging stations, drought tolerant landscaping and above-standard skylight counts. The project is being built speculatively; however, Pacific Industrial has already received strong interest from potential tenants. “We have received interest from some great companies but we do not have a tenant for either building as of yet,” says Floriani. “While you can never really control the timing of leasing a building in this size range, you can control what you are offering and in our case, we know we are providing unique features on both buildings that will make them some of the best buildings available in the entire Inland Empire West. Our hope is that we find one or two businesses that appreciate all those details and want to call it their new home.”

It's no surprise that Pacific Industrial has already received interest, although construction has only just begun. The Fontana submarket is highly sought-after by industrial users. It has a low 3% vacancy rating, and an ever-growing demand for class-A product. “The City of Fontana has great advantages over many cities in the Inland Empire simply due to its location in the region and proximity to freeways,” adds Floriani. “It's close enough to the ports that you can still have trucks make two turns a day, whereas any land in the Inland Empire East can only make one turn, and it still has some land available to accommodate these large types of campuses. The City has also made huge investments in their roadway infrastructure and there overall security. It was recently named one of the safest cities in the entire US.  Our particular site is in North Fontana and has the advantage of being right off the 210 freeway, which in our opinion is one of the best freeways in Southern California.”

This is the latest development in Pacific Industrial's busy pipeline. Earlier this month, the developer broke ground on an 188,570-square-foot industrial park in Vernon, CA, a tight infill industrial market in Central L.A. The speculative development will feature three class-A buildings. The property is scheduled to be complete in the fourth quarter of 2015.