The first new speculative warehouse development in the Indianapolis market since 2008 is now complete and ready for occupancy.
VanTrust Real Estate is the developer behind the market’s first new investment grade facility since that year, a building located at 2450 Stanley Road in Plainfield, Ind. At 450,000 square feet, this facility, known as Project One, comes with the modern features that today’s distributors want, including a 32-foot clear height, ESFR fire protection, high-efficiency lighting and a 10-year real estate tax abatement.
The project made sense for VanTrust thanks to the lack of available industrial space in the Indianapolis market, said Dustin Looper, vice president of industrial services at Colliers International|Indiana Region.
The Indianapolis market has seen little new construction during the last five years, including in the industrial space. This has had a positive impact on both demand and buiding values.
“When looking at historical supply and demand, there is simply not enough warehouse space available to satisfy the market, should demand stay consistent as it has for the past few years,” said Looper, who is also the listing broker for VanTrust’s development, in a written statement. “Even with VanTrust’s building and the other 2.5 million square feet of bulk industrial space currently under construction, the market could possibly experience another shortage of warehouse space in the relatively near future given our historical levels of absorption.”
Though the industrial market was not as strong this year as it was in 2011, this project and others will make 2012 a solid year in the industrial real estate sector with the market’s average industrial vacancy rate dropping from 7.51 percent to 5.21 percent, as of the end of the third quarter.
Commercial brokers working the Indianapolis market aren’t surprised by these numbers. They’ve seen demand for industrial space rise, and they don’t expect the trend to reverse any time soon.
Andy Weeks, vice president at VanTrust Real Estate, summed up the reasons behind the strength of the Indianapolis industrial market well in a written statement of his own: “This market has consistently proved to be an attractive real estate solution for many corporations, and we’re quite excited to be in the center of it.”
