Harte Hanks Debuts Kansas City Distribution Center

Turner Logistics Center, Building I site. Image via Google Earth

Harte Hanks has commenced operations at its new home in Kansas City, Kan., with the opening of its fulfillment and distribution facility at Turner Logistics Center.

The global customer experience company’s 297,000-square-foot space is a recently completed project of NorthPoint Development, owner and developer of the 250-acre master-planned industrial park at the intersection of I-70 & New Turner Diagonal.

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Harte Hanks committed to Turner Logistics in June 2020 with the execution of a long-term lease with NorthPoint. Building I is an approximately 400,000-square-foot structure carrying the address of 6700 Orville Ave. The facility, which delivered in December 2020, is the first of what will ultimately be eight buildings totaling nearly 3 million square feet at Turner Logistics. The state-of-the-art Building I is registered with the FDA and the Kansas Department of Agriculture and will be ground-zero for Harte Hanks’ distribution of more than 20,000 packages and entrée into e-commerce fulfillment.

Harte Hanks’ move into the new temperature-controlled facility marks a relocation from its former main fulfillment center location in Grand Prairie, Texas, as well as the consolidation of two additional locations at Turner Logistics. “This consolidation initiative and move to the geographic center of our country will allow for significant operational efficiencies within our fulfillment business and will provide improved shipping time and cost for our customers,” Andrew Benett, CEO of Harte Hanks, said during the company’s third quarter earnings conference call on Nov. 12, 2020. “Further investments in technology and light automation will position us to best serve our current and future customers.”

Ascension of Kansas City  

Kansas City has been on the rise as one of the strongest and fastest-growing industrial markets in the U.S. for the last five years. This year is proving to be another successful year, so far with a record 10.1 million square feet of new product under construction in the first quarter, according to a report by Cushman & Wakefield, which is also handling leasing for Turner Logistics. Wyandotte County is rising the fastest and boasts the lowest vacancy rate of the nine submarkets, at just 3.8 percent, and Turner Logistics is the submarket’s centerpiece.

As Cushman & Wakefield notes in the report, Turner Logistics “is almost certainly the most active speculative project in the market.” Turner Logistics’ Building II, a 375,000-square-foot facility, was one-third preleased by the end of the first quarter and is scheduled to reach completion later in 2021. “The expectation is the park will continue to lease rapidly and additional buildings will be under construction soon,” according to the Cushman & Wakefield report.