Watson, ProLogis Lease 336,000 SF of Industrial

[IMGCAP(2)]According to Geoff Landon, executive vice president at Motivational Fulfillment & Logistics Services, the operational cost savings that the fulfillment and fourth-party logistics services provider realized in its first Watson LEED building was a key factor in its decision to sign the new, three-year, $2.2 million lease for an additional 121,390 square feet. "It made our decision to expand into another Watson LEED building extremely easy," Landon says.

The remaining 297,107 square feet that Motivational Fulfillment & Logistics occupies is in a building at 6810 Bickmore Ave., adjacent to the building at 6911 Bickmore Ave. The company moved into the original 297,107 square feet in 2007.

Both of Motivational Fulfillment's leases are in Watson's Legacy brand industrial buildings, notes Lance Ryan, vice president of marketing and leasing for Watson Land. Watson's 60-acre Commerce Center Chino features a range of Legacy buildings that are LEED-certified class A industrial buildings that have attracted tenants including Nature's Best and AEP Industries.

The 297,107-square-foot building that Motivational Fulfillment leases was the first speculative industrial building in Southern California to be awarded Gold-level LEED certification. In the new lease at 6911 Bickmore, both Watson and Motivational Fulfillment were represented byTom Taylor, Steve Bellitti and Josh Hayes of Colliers International.

In the 215,000-square-foot Golden State lease, Phil Lombardo of the Ontario office of Cushman & Wakefield tells GlobeSt.com that Golden State will realize significant cost savings in its move to the Inland Empire from 216,000 square feet at Mid-Counties Business Park in Santa Fe Springs. Lombardo and John McMillan of Cushman & Wakefield's Downtown Los Angeles office represented Golden State. He also negotiated an early lease termination from the Santa Fe Springs facility for Golden State, which had 20 months remaining on its commitment at Mid-Counties, so that the company could move to the ProLogis building. The early termination of Golden State's lease in turn enabled Vans Shoes, which was already occupying 317,000 square feet at Mid-Counties Business Park, to expand into the 216,000 square feet of former Golden State space in another deal negotiated by Lombardo.

Golden State Container's 215,000 square feet of new space is in a newly constructed, 369,000-square-foot facility at ProLogis Park Ontario Airport, a six-building, 1.9-million-square-foot project off Interstate 15 between interstates 10 and 60. According to Dave Oliver, president of California operations for Golden State Container, the new space will enable the firm to "offer even better service to our cross section of industrial customers and the moving and storage industry based on the extremely fast growth of all industries in the eastern L.A. County and the Inland Empire."

Oliver adds that locating in the new building "puts us directly in the center of activity for future industrial growth both for our suppliers as well as our customers." Tyson Chave, vice president and market officer for ProLogis, notes that Golden State and its related companies now lease a total of 324,000 square feet of ProLogis distribution space in the US and Mexico. ProLogis was represented in the lease by Joe McKay and Mike Wolfe of the Ontario office of Lee & Associates.