A Path to Building New Industrial Product

Leaders gather for the ground breaking of the new facility.

LOS ANGELES—Industrial developer Seventh Street Development has completed a near impossible feat: bringing new industrial product to the notoriously tight San Gabriel Valley market. The developer has broken ground on a 195,130-square-foot industrial project in Irwindale on one of the last remaining plots of land. It is the first speculative project in a decade, and the developer won the deal by partnering with the city and donating a portion of the land to American Veterans Post 113 Headquarters and Event Center.

“To be successful, we had to make sure that we could entitle the property and deliver something that the public wanted,” Craig Furniss, president at Seventh Street Development, tells GlobeSt.com about the firm’s strategy to win the project. “The AMVETS is on the Eastern boarder of the property, and they had been there for 56 years. When we looked at the land, we knew that we couldn’t tear down the AMVETS, so as part of this transaction, we made a donation to the AMVETS of California charity, and they allowed the location to buy the facility. We got the 10-acre site next door. This turned out to be the best solution. If we hadn’t done that, we could have had a bigger project, but we would have had some very unhappy people. We didn’t want to displace them ethically or morally. We are very pleased that the AMVETS now own their facility, and that we are able to move forward with our project. This is an example where doing good is good business.”