The promise of more industrial warehouse space to meet growing demand was cause for a celebration in Saugus Thursday among the collection of Santa Clarita Valley business leaders at the groundbreaking of the Covington Group Inc.’s new project, the Santa Clarita Commerce Center.
The Dallas-based developer brought out the golden shovels to its lot off Springbrook Avenue at the groundbreaking for about 430,000 square feet of warehouse space — which also represents about one-third of the available supply.
In a sector where the current vacancy rate is below 2%, the project will help solve a lot of problems, said Craig Peters, vice chairman of CBRE.
“The importance of projects like this is being able to provide homes for new jobs — so not only to retain companies that are expanding here, but also to attract new companies,” Peters said.
“We currently have zero buildings available over 60,000 square feet in the entire market,” he added, “so that doesn’t allow us to attract many big companies.”
This project will help remedy that situation, said Dana Whitmer, CEO for the Covington Group, which also owns the adjacent Saugus Station Industrial Center.
The plans — four buildings ranging in size from 40,100 square feet to the largest at 262,522 square feet — were approved by the Santa Clarita Planning Commission in June 2023.
At that hearing, Whitmer said he’d been working with staff for four and a half years, and Thursday, he said the result was a “new, state-of-the-art space to bring the best-in-class buildings to the 22.3-acre lot, which is being designed as a stand-alone business campus, according to its promotional materials.
Scenic Expressions, which provides sets, storage and transportation for the film and television industry, is next door. That business signed a lease with Covington for a 69.5-acre, 975,300-square foot property at 25530-25765 Springbrook Avenue near the end of 2022.
Santa Clarita Councilman Jason Gibbs said the “light industrial” warehouse space was something the city really needed, which he mentioned as a factor that previously was something that prevented his employer, GP Strategies Corp., from being able to consider an SCV relocation.
