HOUSTON-Liberty Property Trust has broken ground on a 79,600-sf multi-tenant spec industrial building in Central Green Business Park, a 290-acre development on the northern edge of town. The park's eighth building will cost $2.8 million to develop.

The Houston office of Cadence McShane Corp. is the general contractor on a project designed by local architect, Seeburger & Associates LP. Central Green 8, which will sit on 7.5 acres at 1646 Rankin Rd., will deliver by year's end.

According to Chuck White, vice president and division manager with Cadence McShane, the project requires a quick turnaround. "They want this done and ready to lease by the end of the year," White adds tenant need is dictating the quick speed of construction.

"We're down the path on a potential lease for about a quarter of the building already," says Andrew Mele, vice president for the Malvern, PA-based Liberty Property. He tells GlobeSt.com that, with much of Liberty's more than 600,000 sf already leased in Central Green, "we're seeing a lot of folks looking for fourth-quarter type of situations here."

Though leasing has been strong among the seven other Liberty-owned Central Green Business Park buildings, Mele stopped short of acknowledging more spec space would break ground any time soon. "We want to look at how things go here during the next few months," he says. "If we can get the preleasing done right off the bat on this one, we won't waste much more time. We'll get more developed."