Industrial Realty Launches 50-Acre Project at NASA Campus

Propel Park. Image courtesy of Industrial Realty Group

Industrial Realty Group has broken ground on Propel Park, a 50-acre industrial-and-office project within NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility campus in New Orleans.

Reportedly the first of its kind within NOLA’s city limits in more than 20 years, the campus is anticipated to include up to 1.3 million square feet to be developed in phases, targeting users of light assembly, manufacturing, distribution and office space. IRG’s design-build partner and the project’s general contractor is Impetus.

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In 2021, IRG signed a long-term ground lease for the development parcel located at 13800 Old Gentilly Road, near Interstate 510 and U.S. Highway 90. This being New Orleans, the site features a 19.5-foot levee and onsite pumps. The location also has access to a deep-water port.

The development’s first phase, a 260,000-square-foot warehouse, will be home to Textron Systems, which has signed a 10-year lease and will relocate from their existing space within a Michoud Assembly Facility (MAF) building into a new 97,025-square-foot distribution hub. Bill Boyer of CBRE and Leon Audibert of Property One are the project’s marketing and leasing agents.

Factory for the Space Age

In a prepared statement, Michael Hecht, president & CEO of Greater New Orleans Inc., described the MAF a world-class facility where the biggest rockets and the longest windmill blades in human history were designed and assembled.

With a history going back to 1940, the MAF was developed under NASA in the 1960s, when it was used by Chrysler Corp. to build the first stages of the early Saturn rockets and later by Boeing to build the first stage of the Saturn V rocket.

Since then, the 832-acre MAF has built, among other key items for the U.S. space program, the Space Shuttle’s external fuel tank and components for the International Space Station.