A joint venture between Conor Commercial Real Estate and Globe Corp. has assembled three parcels in the Airport submarket for a new speculative industrial build. While the land site would have made an attractive development prospect regardless, the Airport submarket is an opportunity zone, which made the project particularly attractive to the developers.

“This is in an opportunity zone in Phoenix, which we took advantage of as a venture,” Derek Buescher, senior development analyst at Conor Commercial Real Estate, tells Globest.com. “That definitely enticed us to proceed with the project more aggressively during the acquisition stage, but this site is so well located, we would have proceeded with the project either way.”

The development site is an assemblage of three parcels totaling 18.8 acres. The main site is 16 acres, but was too oddly shaped for development without the addition of the two adjacent parcels. Two developers tried to assemble the three sites previously, but were unable to secure the adjacent parcels to make the development work. “We give a lot of credit to Cushman for bringing us this site and helping us with the assemblage,” says Buescher. “To make it usable, we have to acquire two additional parcels to square it off. Cushman worked with those owners and convinced them to sell. Acquiring those made what was not a usable site into land that could really accommodate class-A industrial.”