Needham Ranch planners and developers raised the first wall in the first building for Phase 2 of their industrial park, marking the occasion as a milestone for a project that’s more than 10 years in the making.
The development, located off the 23000 block of Sierra Highway and overlooking Highway 14, is set to add six more buildings on their 250-acre property, which will result in the creation of hundreds of thousands of new square footage for office, warehouse and loading space for prospective businesses.
The first building, dubbed Building 10, is set to be completed by August, and project managers said the 179,854-square-foot building is expected to feature minimum clear heights of 36 feet, a minimum 140-foot truck court depth with secure yard areas, ESFR fire sprinklers and 30 dock-high loading positions with a cross-dock configuration.
“We’ve got several companies that are kind of fighting over it right now, and then we’ll build the rest of the buildings, down to Building 18, down through the rest of the project,” said Craig Peters, executive vice president for CBRE, in reference to the soon to be completed Building 10.
The business park has already seen hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars move into the Santa Clarita Valley since Phase 1 was completed last spring, with businesses such as Illumination Dynamics and Amazon among the first to set up shop.
Through the use of a crane, pulleys and dozens of construction workers, officials watched as the concrete slab that would be the first vertical support for Building 10 was dropped into place, indicating to all those there, including for those who have been involved in the planning of Needham Ranch for over a decade, that the final phase of the project has begun.
“The thing that was always apparent to us was that Santa Clarita was going to be a location within the greater Los Angeles County … where there was going to be a lot of growth, because it is sort of like a last piece of land,” said John Balestra, principal with Trammell Crow Company’s SoCal — Los Angeles office, adding he began working on the project in 2008. “And so, it made sense today like it did back then: This community was going to need a place for business to create local employment opportunities for residents and play some role in the reduction of the horrible traffic we’ve got going on to the San Fernando Valley.”
Once fully completed, Needham Ranch is set to include approximately 1.9 million square feet of industrial space, with Phase 1 comprising 850,375 square feet and an additional 1 million square feet set to be delivered as part of Phase 2.
The six more buildings will be gradually completed in the months following Building 10’s completion this summer and they are expected to range from approximately 72,636 square feet to up to 500,000 square feet.
