Ivanhoé Cambridge Plans $450M Industrial Project in Inland Empire

By Scott Baltic, Contributing Editor

Colony Commerce Center

Ivanhoé Cambridge has acquired from CapRock Partners two large parcels of land in Ontario, Calif., which will be developed as Colony Commerce Center, a more than $450 million Class A industrial project, the two companies announced. CapRock Partners will develop the 11-building, two-phase project on behalf of Ivanhoé Cambridge.

The purchase price was not disclosed.

The project, in Southern California’s Inland Empire, will consist of almost 3 million square feet of leasable space and offer building sizes as large as 1 million square feet.

The two sites are adjacent, though separated by a road, and total about 150 acres, an Ivanhoé Cambridge spokesperson told Commercial Property Executive. He added that construction of phase one is expected to start toward the end of this year and of phase two sometime in the first quarter of 2019.

“We strongly believe that Colony Commerce Center will allow us to capitalize on the growing demand for rental space by offering modern industrial facilities in one of the best U.S. logistics markets,” Mario Morroni, executive vice president, Industrial, North America, at Ivanhoé Cambridge, said in a prepared statement.

CapRock CEO Patrick Daniels referenced “the myriad of environmental, infrastructure, and entitlement challenges over four years to bring this strategic project to life.”

Darla Longo and Barbara Emmons Perrier of CBRE National Partners West helped facilitate the transaction.

A market driven by e-commerce

The Inland Empire industrial real estate market is thriving, at the intersection of continued strong growth in e-commerce and record volumes at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, according to a second-quarter report from Cushman & Wakefield.

Ontario is the region’s largest industrial submarket, with an inventory of 110.3 million square feet. Overall vacancy is a paltry 2.1 percent, and only about 1.1 million square feet is under construction or has been delivered YTD, again per Cushman and Wakefield.

In a deal showing how tight the Inland Empire market is, earlier this month, DHL bought Cajon Distribution Center, an 830,750-square-foot industrial property in San Bernardino, from Westcore Properties. The latter had purchased the property only a year earlier.

Image courtesy of Ivanhoé Cambridge