More spec industrial buildings get permits
City of Visalia plans to extend Riggin widening
-December 10,2019-
Two more massive speculative industrial buildings got City of Visalia permits this past week. Fresno’s Diversified Development Group (DDG) will build a 244,280sf concrete tilt-up building at 2520 N Plaza Drive and a second 120,000sf building next door at 9105 W Riggin, both located at the SE corner Riggin and Plaza.The site is across the street from the huge 88-acre United Parcel Service hub under construction now.
On the same piece of dirt DDG plans 2 more buildings, 188,4000sf and 144,000sf, all clustered on 35 acres.
This is just the latest in a growing list of industrial developers ready to fund big construction projects and land purchases ahead of any firm commitments by tenants.
The largest of these type buildings is a 1.1 million sf behemoth on the drawing board that is expected to be built early next year right next to the UPS complex. The project is being proposed by LA-based CapRock Partners, who has the only million sf spec building in the Southland as well, notes company principal Pat Daniels. Like that LA spec project Visalia too will be built putting their money where their hunch is.That hunch is that if they build it in Visalia, someone will show up to fill it.
UPS launched all this
Industrial real estate agent Nick Audino believes “UPS launched all this interest, made stronger by a very low vacancy rate in the Visalia Industrial Park.” As for the big CapRock building Audino says “you just got to give them a good chance to lease it.”
The low vacancy rates here have been highlighted by a 2018 Colliers study suggesting that the vacancy rate in the Visalia Industrial Park has dropped from 5% in 2013 to half that in early 2018. Visalia has more than 15 million square feet of industrial space as it is says Colliers.
Diversified Development Group itself has pioneered the strategy for years building 3 large spec buildings next to Visalia’s largest private employer VFCorp (1200 workers strong) in 2018 and quickly filling them up.
For he past few decades DDG has built several complexes adding up to more than 2million square in Visalia with one large cluster of buildings close to Plaza and 198.The firm manages over 8 million square feet of industrial properties from Visalia to Fresno,more than 45 buildings.
DDG is looking a few years out with plans published to build 2.8 million square feet in 8 buildings on 150 acres they bought from the Doe family on the northwest corner of Plaza and Riggin – clearly Visalia’s hottest address.
Now there is a new player the spec game. YS Holdings Inc, LLC has purchased 38 acres in the Visalia Industrial Parkand is building two 300,000sf buildings near Kelsey and south of Riggin close to the new Millipore Sigma building under construction now. The two buildings are being permitted by the City of Visalia right now Construction is set to begin into first quarter of 2020 says veteran Visalia builder Basil Perch, the contractor on the job.
While the buildings are spec at least one is likely to be used by the developer for one of his companies say city sources.
All this construction is helping the permit values to go sky high in Visalia.Right now new commercial valuation is up over 200% this year so far to nearly $50 million.
If you need spec building in a slightly smaller size, architect Thom Black has an 87,000sf warehouse building available on Sunnyview. Several developers have 25,000sf spec buildings for lease and others like Pickett Construction build in 5000sf size for smaller business operators.
Realtor Audino says he recently leased a large space to packaging company Sonoco packaging as well as 2 smaller 10,000sf spaces, one to Jasper Engines and other to JB Hunt to warehouse furniture for the new retailer in town, Bobs Discount Furniture.
Meanwhile the City of Visalia moved forward with the plan to make it easier to ship and receive goods and move people from Hwy 99 and the Betty Drive interchange agreeing to further widen Riggin that links to the interchange after crossing over the UP tracks.
This past week council approved a plan to spend $39 million to widen Riggin to 4 lanes between Kelsey, where the UPS hub is, all the way past Mooney heading east.
A staff report explains that “due to the current economic climate and low interest rates, TCAG has initiated options to bond for select projects within Measure R regional and therefore has solicited the City if it wishes to advance regional projects through bond financing. Currently, TCAG is pursuing advancement of Measure R regional funds that will allow the City to deliver the Caldwell Avenue project from Santa Fe to Lovers Lane by 2020 and a portion of Riggin Avenue by 2022.”