Watson Land has Been Preparing for This Market for 15 Years
This is a great time to be in the industrial real estate market—nationwide, there aren't many weak markets, and SoCal's leading the charge. That's why we're excited to host Bisnow's 5th annual Industrial Real Estate Event tomorrow at the Montage Beverly Hills, starting at 8am.
Among our panelists will be Watson Land Co president Jeff Jennison. For the next several years, he says, the company's marquee project will be the 260-acre Watson Industrial Park Chino: 11 buildings totaling more than 5M SF to be built in as many as five phases. The first three buildings (600k, 500k and 320k SF) in Phase 1 are completing construction. Two of the buildings have been pre-leased, and Jeff tells us there's significant activity on the third. The company's decision to expand beyond its South Bay master planned business park roots was elementary: Watson realized its extensive SoBay land holdings soon would be fully built out, so in the early 2000s it began making strategic land buys to capitalize on its development platform in other markets.
In addition to this project, which is just east of the Chino airport, Watson has built and leased seven properties in the western Inland Empire city with a total of 2.5M SF (including Watson Commerce Center Chino, above). The Carson-based developer also has built master planned centers in Fontana and Redlands. Jeff is seeing demand across all of its SoCal markets, although SoBay is a little stronger due to the proximity of the ports. In fact, at the moment, the company has not even one available square foot.
During Watson's initial foray into Chino, it developed on former dairy land. The company purchased citrus acreage to develop industrial facilities in Redlands, in the eastern IE (like Watson Commerce Center Redlands, above). In the early '90s, Watson began building and branding Legacy buildings, a new generation of industrial properties with more features than your standard industrial facility, such as higher clear heights, more perimeter glass, and eight-inch reinforced concrete floors. Jeff notes the company retains its properties so it invests more on the front end. So far it's built 10M SF of Legacy buildings—including 6M SF that are LEED certified—surpassing its portfolio of first generation buildings.
But the latter isn't gathering any moss—Watson has been upgrading those older buildings, improving the office space and adding truck doors or expanded yards and turning radius, to make them more distribution friendly. Some clients who had their offices and warehouses in separate locations have blended the two components in one of Watson's renovated buildings. (Example: Bristol Farms' HQ in Carson, above.) Another initiative is to build all its spec buildings to LEED standards. In a similar vein, Watson was perhaps the first West Coast developer to build 36-foot clear height on a spec basis. Today, there's noise about 40- and 42-foot clear heights and drone delivery. "One thing we know is there's always going to be changes and enhancements to the supply chain that improve efficiency," Jeff says. "If there's a landlord that's going to build in flexibility, it's us." To hear more, join us tomorrow for our Industrial Real Estate Event, starting 8am at the Montage Beverly Hills. Sign up here.
