GO Industrial Builds 1.7M-SF Construction Pipeline in Just Six Months

GO Industrial has hit the ground running. The industrial division of development firm George Oliver launched in February and has 1.7 million square feet of industrial product under construction.

“Creating great partnerships, both internal and external, to launch GO Industrial was key to our early growth,” Robert Guerena, managing partner at GO Industrial, tells GlobeSt.com about how the firm has scaled so quickly. “We were able to focus on finding deals that met our investment thesis while leveraging the resources that Curt Kremer and Charles Jerkovich brought as entrepreneurs and real estate professionals to execute. With a good base of projects on the books we are now very focused on building out the platform with talented individuals to execute on these deals. Over the next 12 months, we expect to be able to add another million square feet or so to the GO Industrial development portfolio.”

While industrial has boomed in markets large and small across the country—really anywhere with access to a population center—GO Industrial is targeting Phoenix, which it believes has the most growth potential. “Our backyard, Phoenix, provides the most potential for the next few years and is a great benchmark for evaluating other markets,” says Guerena. “For example, the user base in Phoenix is continuing to evolve as manufacturing and technology users make large investments here. Our population is also rapidly growing, and we are seeing a lot of demand spill over from our hyper competitive neighbor, Southern California. We also have longstanding local relationships that put us in the best position to capitalize on growth.”

The firm also broke ground on a 28-acre infill site in Salt Lake City, where it will build a two-building, 503,792-square-foot, fully speculative project. It is partnering with Crow Holdings Capital on the project. “Partners like Crow Holdings see many deals across the nation and provide macro-level insight to the drivers for industrial product – both tenant and capital-wise,” says Guerena. “That helps us make smarter investment decisions and win more deals. It seems like we are getting at a least a call a week from equity groups looking to expand their industrial investment into the West via joint ventures or acquisitions.”

Overall, the firm is most active in places where it can leverage existing relationships. “As a development platform, we prefer to play in markets where we can execute and rely on our consultants and contractors, so those relationships play a large role. From an investment standpoint, we look for quickly growing populations and/or markets with high barriers to entry, such as limited land for development,” adds Guerena.

The Salt Lake City project will break ground in September and deliver in July 2022.