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San Francisco

Chicago firm plans almost 440K sf of new industrial in NorCal

Three of five projects by industrial arm of CA Ventures aim to capitalize on tight supply

CA Industrial’s William Lu with 1551 Atlantic Street in Union City and the Port of Richmond (CA Industrial, LoopNet, California Association of Port Authorities)
CA Industrial’s William Lu with 1551 Atlantic Street in Union City (top-left) and the Port of Richmond (CA Industrial, LoopNet, California Association of Port Authorities)

The industrial arm of CA Ventures is working on a trio of industrial projects that will combine to add more than 400,000 square feet of new and refurbished space in and near the Bay Area.

The projects are among five planned by the Chicago-based developer in Northern California, Los Angeles and Washington state. They will come at a collective cost of $272 million to develop and total more than 670,000 square feet.

Over the past eight months, the company has formed partnerships with asset managers and real estate firms —including Realterm, DWS and American Realty Advisors — to co-develop the projects, purchase their underlying land, or both, it said in a news release this week.

The West Coast’s industrial market has some of the U.S.’s strongest rent appreciation and tenant activity and lowest vacancy rates, CA Industrial’s William Lu said in a statement. Combined with the lack of available land for such developments in the market, and “we feel strongly that our proposed projects will encounter strong leasing interest,” he said.

That seems especially likely in the supply-constrained East Bay, where CA Industrial is pursuing two of its projects. The firm is one of several industrial developers and investors based in the Midwest that have expanded westward in recent years. Among them: Indianapolis-based Duke Realty, which has pitched projects in five Bay Area cities over the past five years; Chicago-based Bridge Industrial, which wants to build an almost 720,000-square-foot warehouse complex in San Jose, the city’s largest such development; and Illinois-based CenterPoint Properties, which plans to buy $400 million worth of Bay Area real estate this year.

For one of its East Bay projects, CA Industrial and an unidentified asset manager aim to redevelop an underutilized warehouse at 1411 Harbor Way South at the Port of Richmond into a 202,400-square-foot industrial facility by the end of next year. It’s the largest single development in its West Coast pipeline.

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Its second-biggest by square footage is a 175,500-square-foot building it’s co-developing with American Realty Advisors and Four Stones Real Estate in Watsonville, about 18 miles south of the Bay Area’s southern tip. That project along California’s Central Coast is slated for completion in the third quarter of next year.

CA Industrial and DWS, a German asset management company, are also working on upgrading a vacant 59,000-square-foot building at 1551 Atlantic Street in Union City to make it more attractive to prospective tenants.

Kansas City-based law firm Polsinelli represented CA Industrial in the deals.

In Southern California, CA Industrial and Realterm are developing a 132,300-square-foot Class A warehouse at 351 Covina Lane in La Puente, a city in the Los Angeles Basin. The pair expect to wrap up construction in the third quarter of 2023. And in Washington, CA Industrial and Transwestern Investment Group plan to complete a 97,000-square-foot Class A warehouse in Covington in the greater Seattle area by the fourth quarter of next year.

Centris Industrial, a private REIT affiliated with CA Ventures, is partially financing all of CA Industrial’s West Coast projects. JLL is the listing broker for the three in Northern California, while Colliers and NAI Puget Sound are handling leasing for the Los Angeles and Seattle ones.

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