USAA Plans Record DFW Industrial Project

East Gate Logistics Center. Image courtesy of Seefried Industrial Properties

The largest speculative industrial property to ever take shape in the Dallas-Fort Worth market will soon become a reality now that USAA Real Estate and Seefried Industrial Properties have joined forces to develop East Gate Logistics Center. The partners will build the nearly 1.3 million-square-foot facility in Forney, Texas, roughly 20 miles east of downtown Dallas.

East Gate will occupy an approximately 113-acre site along the southern corridor of US 80, according to a sound emissions evaluation of the project produced in December 2020. Seefried and USAA plan to deliver a state-of-the-art facility offering such highly coveted features as 40-foot clear heights, on-site trailer queuing, ample car and trailer parking and an ESFR sprinkler system. Additionally, the property will have the capacity to house either multiple tenants or serve as home to a single occupant.

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Seefried and USAA are billing East Gate as cost-effective accommodations for large-scale e-commerce, manufacturing and distribution needs. The partners have tapped Tony Creme and Ann Jaggars of KBC Advisors to spearhead leasing for the project. Groundbreaking for East Gate is on schedule to take place in the first quarter of 2022.

Forney’s formula

Forney is fast moving up on the radar as a leading location for industrial product for two reasons, one of which is the town’s land availability. “The Northeast/East Dallas submarket has recorded a historically low vacancy rate of 5 percent. With undeveloped infill sites becoming scarce and the historically low vacancy rate, developers are turning their eyes to available land in more outlying markets such as Forney and Terrell,” according to a third quarter 2021 report by Holt Lunsford Commercial.

The City of Forney is also becoming a mecca for industrial development due to the arrival of big-name tenants. With Seefried as developer, Amazon opened a fulfillment center totaling 1 million square feet and a 200,000-square-foot delivery station at a separate location in the East Dallas town in 2021. Goodyear, however, made its debut in Forney first, with a 1.2 million-square-foot warehouse and distribution center that broke ground in 2019. Seefried and USAA expect to complete construction of East Gate in mid-2023.