The sky is the limit on industrial features these days. In the Inland Empire, an industrial market driven by third-party logistics, users are looking for large floor plates, clear heights of at least 40 feet on new product and a central location. For the limited number of buildings that fit this bill, there is strong user demand

“The model for Class-A distribution is constantly changing.  Only a few short years ago the industry was moving from 32-foot clear height to 36-foot clear in these larger buildings; now we are looking at 40-foot clear or greater,” Jason Krotts, a principal at REDA, tells GlobeSt.com. “As we design these facilities, we take the approach of a long-term owners perspective. The intention is to try to forecast where design changes are occurring and implement these changes to capture as much of the market as possible.  Tenants seem to be taking more advantage of the overall cubic volume of these facilities and the racking and fire systems are changing.  More and more users are putting in material handling systems, which are starting to change how these buildings are designed.”

Developer REDA has broken ground on the Ontario Ranch Logistics Center, a new 2.6 million-square-foot industrial facility in Ontario with the intention of bringing a best-in-class asset to market to fill this demand. “Our vision when designing the project was to create a Best-in-Class logistics park ,which would be used by one user in a campus-like setting or split up and occupied by multiple users,” says Krotts. “Approximately 56% of tenant demand in this industry is from third party logistics providers and/or e-commerce users. While we aren't necessarily targeting a specific user, we tried to design the project to be utilized by a wide range of user groups.  We have had some strong preliminary interest from users, which would be classified within those two categories.” REDA has partnered with Clarion Partners to develop the project, which is set to deliver in December 2019.