National Distributors Filling Up Spaces in Indy

2370 Perry Rd. in suburban Plainfield, IN, is just the latest new building to become 100% occupied.

INDIANAPOLIS—Landlords in this centrally-located city continue to make substantial progress in filling up the huge amount of distribution space added to the market in the past year or so. Best Choice Products , a seller of direct-from-manufacturer products for children, pets and households, has just signed a lease for 176,000 square feet at 2370 Perry Rd. in suburban Plainfield, bringing the 352,960-square-foot building to full occupancy. “That means this building was filled within a year of its completion,” JLL executive vice president Steve Schwegman tells GlobeSt.com. “It was built with half of the space pre-leased to Southwest Sanitary Co. , another distributor,” and the success further validates the focus developers have put on e-commerce. Best Choice, for example, distributes products through its own website as well as Amazon , eBay and others. “Indianapolis is a very logical choice for distributors because they can reach a huge proportion of the US population in a short time.” Schwegman represented Best Choice Products and JLL senior vice presidents Chip Barnes and Matt Dickerson represented the landlord, Clarion Partners , in this transaction. As reported in GlobeSt.com, around this time last year there was somewhat of a lag in leasing activity , but recently things have picked up. “It is going really well,” says Schwegman. “We saw some momentum at the end of the year and that momentum seems to be carrying forward into this year.” In fact, “there are five deals that will happen in the Plainfield area in the first quarter, with a total of about 2 million square feet. That would be a very significant quarter for us, especially since most of this will be for first generation spec buildings.” And he expects that all of this leasing activity will result in even more new construction in 2016. “It seems likely that one or two developers will pull the trigger.”