With the low vacancy rate and little developable land in Los Angeles, developers are heading to north to Santa Clarita to bring more industrial supply to the market. Trammell Crow Company and Clarion Partners have broken ground on The Center at Needham Ranch, a 54-acre industrial business park in Santa Clarita that is part of a 132-acre fully entitled industrial development. The project is slated for delivery in the third quarter 2018. We sat down with John Balestra, SVP at Trammell Crow Company to talk about the development and industrial activity and demand in the Santa Clarita market.

GlobeSt.com: What is your vision for Center at Needham Ranch?

John Balestra: Our vision is to deliver a best-in-class business park into a hyper-supply constrained market to meet the needs of occupiers desiring modern, state-of-the-art industrial space. The Greater Los Angeles North industrial market contains about 172 million SF of space with an average age of more than 40 years and only 21 million SF, or 5%, is considered Class A industrial space. The current vacancy rate for Class A space in the Los Angeles North market is effectively zero for locations in proximity to the populations centers in the greater San Fernando Valley. We are delivering buildings with modern features coveted by occupiers seeking greater operating efficiencies including up to 36-foot minimum clear height with ESFR fire sprinklers to accommodate substantially greater cubic storage capacity than a typical building in the LA North market with 24-foot or less interior clearance, abundant dock high and ground level truck loading positions with larger truck courts for efficient movement of product and higher levels of parking for vehicles than is typical in the market to support higher levels of employees and office build out than most existing industrial building can accommodate. In combination with the many advantages of locating within the City of Santa Clarita, combined with the ability to deliver up to 4 million SF of space, we believe that the Center at Needham Ranch will in time be recognized as the premiere location in the Santa Clarita and San Fernando Valley for business.