Evergreen Devco to Build Industrial Park on Spec in Tempe

Evergreen Devco will demolish a newly purchased office building outside Phoenix and replace it with twin industrial buildings and an outdoor storage yard.

The Phoenix-based developer is razing the 157,000-square-foot office building to build a pair of spec industrial buildings totaling 171,000 square feet at 2530 West Campus Drive and 2727 South 48th Street, in Tempe, the Phoenix Business Journal reported.

Evergreen will also build 65,600 square feet of outdoor storage on the southeast corner site at 48th Street and Alameda Drive, 13 miles east of Phoenix.

The new industrial park, 48th @ Alameda, aims to serve rising demand.

“Oftentimes you see industrial developers will put up buildings without really carefully examining where the bulk of the demand is,” Brian Dietz, vice president of industrial development for Evergreen, told the Business Journal. “We believe it to be small to medium-sized tenants that may need some outdoor storage component to store equipment, trailers or raw materials.

“And oftentimes, it’s tenants that want to be in this kind of location that need more grade loading than dock-high loading. Most of the new industrial buildings you see are dock high.”

Evergreen bought the 49-year-old Class B office building early last month for a little more than $13 million, or $83 per square foot. Demolition is underway.

The developer hopes to break ground on the industrial campus next month or early October, with construction expected to take a year.

Brokers Jim and Garrett Wilson of Cushman & Wakefield hold the listing, both for lease or for sale.

“48th @ Alameda is the perfect redevelopment conversion from an outdated, functionally obsolete office building to a first-class, institutional quality, multi-tenant industrial project,” Jim Wilson said in a statement.

Evergreen Devco, founded in 1974 by Bruce Pomeroy and Andrew Skipper, has developed 17 million feet of retail projects, with 86 projects in the pipeline, according to its website. The firm has also developed 27 multifamily projects containing 4,200 apartments, with 5,000 units also in the works in Arizona, California, Colorado and Utah.

In 2021, Evergreen launched an industrial platform focused on markets in Phoenix and Denver, with multiple developments now in the pipeline.

— Dana Bartholomew