Prologis signs Home Depot to 111-acre chunk of spec industrial hub in Inland Empire

Prologis is filling up a massive industrial development in the Inland Empire before construction has even started.

The San Francisco-based industrial landlord signed Home Depot to two buildings under development across 111 acres of land in Ontario, according to memorandums of the leases filed with the county last month.

Prologis declined to comment on the lease due to “customer confidentiality.”

Home Depot did not respond to a request for comment.

Home Depot will take up two buildings located at the speculative masterplan, which is called the Merrill Commerce Center.

The project covers 376 acres Grove Avenue on the east, Carpenter Avenue on the west, Eucalyptus Avenue to the north, and Merrill Avenue to the south.

Prologis is building another 4.1 million-square-foot development at the Merrill Commerce Center — a five-story structure with four floors dedicated to robotics, according to the city of Ontario.

Amazon recently signed a lease for 4.1 million square feet  in the city of Ontario, according to CBRE, raising the likelihood that the e-commerce giant took up the five-story structure, given it’s the only 4.1 million-square-foot development in the city.

Home Depot’s lease comes at a section of the Merrill Commerce Center project where Prologis is developing two other buildings of roughly 1.5 million square feet each on 55 acres, according to Rudy Zeledon, a planning director at the city of Ontario, though Zeledon declined to comment on whether Home Depot was the tenant.

The lease at the Merrill Commerce Center comes less than a month after the Atlanta-based home improvement retailer signed a deal to take up a separate 1.1 million-square-foot building in Ontario — one under development by New York-based Clarion Partners.

Clarion’s building is located closeby, on the southeastern corner of Euclid Avenue and Eucalyptus Avenue. Clarion is building the property as part of a larger industrial center complex across 86 acres of land.

Home Depot already has a warehouse in Ontario — a roughly 668,000-square-foot property also owned by Prologis.

The home retailer saw its sales during the pandemic, as people at home looked to do-it-yourself projects and contractors saw an uptick in renovations. Its sales in the fourth quarter of 2021 reached $35.7 billion — a 10.7 percent increase year-on-year. For the whole year, sales increased 14.4 percent compared with 2020, reaching $151.2 billion.

The surge in sales has prompted a need for more distribution centers — 95 percent of which the firm leases.

The company had a total of around 88.5 million square feet of warehouse space at the end of 2021 — a 16 percent increase from the end of 2020, when it reported 75.9 million square feet, according to financial filings.