Electric car maker leases 160K sf in Newark

The electric car company Lucid Motors is expanding its East Bay presence with the leasing of a 160,000-square-foot industrial building at the Morton Commerce Center in Newark, according to Dominic Guan from CBRE. Financial terms of the lease were not disclosed.

Lucid Motors will take over the last available building at the industrial park, located at 7395 Morton Avenue. It sits on a 161,680-square-feet lot and has 20 dock doors, 181 parking spaces and a 100 percent solar ready roof. Lucid will be neighbors with Facebook as the social media platform is the tenant of a 225,000-square-foot building also in Morton Commerce Center.

Lucid Motors is headquartered in Newark and owns a building located on 7373 Gateway Boulevard. Lucid also has offices in Beverly Hills and Costa Mesa, as well as opening up a showroom in New York last year.

The electric car company had 130,000 reservations for its latest model last quarter, which includes 100,000 vehicles ordered by the government of Saudi Arabia. The manufacturer has one model called the Lucid Air that gets 520 miles per charge. It starts at $77,400 and ranges up to $179,000.

The East Bay industrial market continues strong, according to a second-quarter report by JLL. The lack of supply to meet demand has driven up average asking rents to $1.26 per square foot, which is a 13 percent increase from the previous quarter. With new space not expected to break ground until at least 2023, demand is expected to stay high as users compete for the 4.5 percent of vacant space in the market.

“Corporate occupiers continue to compete against each other for limited space as they find more value in proximity to consumers and labor than the lease rate,” the report said.

Not only is leasing activity up, but pre-leasing has become more popular as a way to secure the limited space. Duke Realty pre-leased a 160,000-square-foot warehouse in Hayward to a France-based logistics company and still has two more properties under construction in the East Bay that are available. The tire company TireHub pre-leased a 60,000-square-foot building from Prologis in Hayward last month.

The Morton Commerce Center finished construction in 2019 and is owned by Overton Moore Properties. It now has four fully leased Class A industrial buildings. Overton Moore bought the land in 2017 for $30 million from Morton Salt. The developer went forward with the $300 million industrial project, which the city fast-tracked by approving its entitlements in six months.