UPDATED DEC. 12 at 10:45 a.m.:
Amazon.com has bought 195 acres of land in the Inland Empire approved for at least 2.5 million square feet of warehouses. The plot in the High Desert city of Hesperia traded for $162 million.
In October, the Seattle-based e-commerce giant purchased the land approved for three warehouses north of Phelan Road at Los Banos Avenue, Bisnow reported. The seller was the Covington Group, based in Dallas.
The deal works out to $830,769 per acre.
Amazon has already sent bulldozers to the site to grade the property.
Kelly Brady, a public relations analyst for the city, said the site was approved for a 2.5 million-square-foot warehouse.
A notice of determination filed with the state said plans for the project known as Hesperia Commerce Center II call for two industrial warehouses with offices. A final environmental study lists two large warehouses and a smaller building with a combined 3.74 million square feet, according to the city.
Nearby Victorville, north of the Cajon Pass, is home to two Amazon warehouse facilities.
The first Hesperia Commerce Center was developed by Covington and contains more than 3.5 million square feet of industrial buildings leased by such tenants as Modway, a furniture distributor, and Peloton, a fitness equipment firm.
The High Desert markets have been the subject of growing investment from industrial developers as the Inland Empire market works to absorb new supply and grapple with resident pushback against warehouses, according to Bisnow.
The High Desert generally has a reputation for being business-friendly and also has much more available land than the built-up Inland Empire.
The IE is still a strong market, however. This year, Amazon leased 2 million square feet in Jurupa Valley and Ontario.
Correction: Previous story improperly attributed information about grading work underway at the site by Amazon.com.
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Amazon’s purchase and construction of the new warehouse mirrors the firm’s building spree in 2021, when the company put up millions of square feet of new warehouses as e-commerce demand surged with the pandemic.
The retail giant temporarily slowed its pace but has picked it back up again, opening warehouses this year in Oregon and South Carolina, with plans for new projects in Nevada, Texas, Connecticut and elsewhere.
— Dana Bartholomew