The Unexpected Side of Your Pistachio Dealer

You've probably heard of, perhaps even eaten, Roll Global agricultural products like Wonderful pistachios and Halo mandarins. Well there are two big, non-edible reasons you should know about the company's commercial real estate arm, and they're both underway, totaling 2.7M SF.

Santa Monica-based Roll Real Estate Development broke ground last week on a 1M SF build-to-suit for American Tire Distributors under a 20-year industrial lease valued at $119M. The shovel work took place in Roll's huge (1,625 acres) master-planned Paramount Logistics Park in Shafter, Calif., where American Tire has been a tenant since 2007. Last May, the company, currently in 177k SF, signed a build-to-suit lease for a 350k SF building. After it became clear the new building wouldn't be large enough due to the tire company's increasing business, the lease was restructured this year to triple the size. (All this demand must mean one thing: kids love tire swings.)

Roll VP Jason Gremillion (foreground) and director of commercial real estate Todd Bomberg (left) look over Paramount Logistics Park's site plan with RGA Architects' Dennis Roy. The land was pre-zoned industrial when Roll purchased it in 2007—because it was surrounded by the company's almond and pistachio farms, president John Balestra told us yesterday. He notes the City of Shafter did all the entitlement work to make sure it happened—and quickly. "Now, there are no required discretionary approvals to develop the property."

American Tire's facility is being built on 45-plus acres and will boast 234 trailer stalls and 201 loading docks. It'll also contain more office space than many buildings: nearly 10k SF. The company is one of the largest independent suppliers to the replacement tire market, with an 800-vehicle fleet that travels 40 million miles per year to retailers. (Luckily, if one of them gets a flat on the road, it never has far to go for a spare.)

Despite how this looks, workers did not get in the way of those large machines back there. The American Tire groundbreaking comes on the heels of the March construction start of a 1.7M SF distribution center for Ross Dress For Less. John notes that in SoCal as a whole, he's seeing big-box demand from retailers for supersized facilities (1M SF and up), plus a broadening of activity that includes the 200k to 300k SF range, which "tells the story of a recovery for the economy." Roll Real Estate's parent company, Roll Global, is headed by billionaire business couple Stewart and Lynda Resnick. Their holdings include Paramount Citrus, the nation's largest citrus grower.