Brookfield Properties Breaks Ground on Inland Empire Project

Slover Elm Commerce Center. Image courtesy of Brookfield Properties

Brookfield Properties is expanding its portfolio of industrial properties in Southern California with the groundbreaking of Slover Elm Commerce Center in Fontana. The company expects to complete the speculative development in the fall of 2021.

READ ALSO: Rockefeller Group Sells Inland Empire Properties for $81M

The 192,000-square-foot Class A rear-load distribution project will be built on a 8.75-acre site with 32-foot clear heights, 5,700 square feet of office space, a secured 185-foot truck court and 23 dock-high doors. Located at the northeast corner of Slover and Elm Avenues in the Inland Empire West, Slover Elm Commerce Center will have nearby access to Interstates 10 and 15 and will also be situated near Ontario International Airport.

Rebuilding SoCal industrial portfolio

Paul Jones, Brookfield’s vice president of investments, said in prepared remarks that Slover Elm Commerce Center is Brookfield’s first speculative logistics project in Southern California since 2018. He added in his prepared statement that Brookfield has been focused on rebuilding its national development platform after the sale of IDI Logistics, a developer and manager of logistics real estate in the U.S. Back in January 2019, Brookfield sold IDI Logistics for a reported $3.5 billion to Ivanhoé Cambridge, which later partnered with Oxford Properties to share ownership of the logistics real estate company.

Beyond Slover Elm Commerce Center, Brookfield is also looking at other opportunities in Southern California, due to the area’s high population density and institutional liquidity. In the past 12 months, the company has spent $1.7 billion to acquire 10 industrial and logistics properties totaling 2.7 million square feet. The recent acquisitions bring Brookfield’s Southern California portfolio to 6 million square feet spread throughout 39 assets.