NorthPoint Starts 1M SF Warehouse

COLUMBUS—The rise of e-commerce has transformed centrally-located cities such as Columbus into hot industrial markets. NorthPoint Development, for example, just broke ground on a one million-square-foot warehouse in Columbus. JLL's Columbus office partnered with the Riverside, MO-based development firm and will lead the marketing effort for the property.

Located on a 106-acre property near the Rickenbacker International Airport and Norfolk Southern intermodal, the cross-dock warehouse will have a clear height of 36', a height that is becoming more common in many distribution-heavy cities, and ample room for car and trailer parking. Company officials said the site could also hold a second, roughly 500,000-square-foot building.

“We view the Columbus industrial market as firing on all cylinders,” Dan Wendorf, a Columbus-based executive vice president and supply chain specialist for JLL, told GlobeSt.com. The company recently put out a special report on the industrial market here and the role it plays in the nation's distribution network.

“The Columbus market has strong tenant activity right now and a warehouse of this size will be attractive to various industry types that are looking for scale in the Midwest,” he added. “The timing of completion later this year will accommodate those looking to grow their US supply chain with a modern warehouse.” Many users in the e-commerce industry, food and beverage, retail as well as the 3PL industry have already inquired about the property.

According to the JLL study, 47% of the US population, and 33% of the Canadian, lies within a 10-hour drive of Columbus. Although that is comparable to Indianapolis, another giant in the distribution business, Wendorf said “we can service the East Coast and the Southeast more efficiently.”

At about 216 million square feet of space, the metro region's industrial market is comparable in size to Indianapolis. And roughly 100,000 people already work in a logistics-related field.

Since 2010, the vacancy rate among industrial properties here sank from 12.4% to around 6.0%, a decline that far outpaced the national average. Furthermore, in 2014 tenants in the metro area absorbed 4.7 million square feet, also a much faster pace than the US overall.

“We're excited to expand our business to Columbus,” said Robert Gude, vice president of development at NorthPoint. “It's an industrial market we believe in. We feel confident in the direction this market is headed.”