GlobeSt.com EXCLUSIVE: Regional Ops Center Cordons Off 210,563 SF

COPPELL, TX-A California equipment and services provider for the telecommunications industry knew it wanted to open its third US regional operations center in Dallas-Fort Worth, but it was the business-friendly incentives laid on the table by the City of Coppell that stole the show from its competitors, a corporate contact confides.

The Somera Communications insider won’t divulge the terms, but tells GlobeSt.com that they were sweet enough to sway the deal for 210,563 of a 308,000-sf building that delivered in late summer as the first spec product in the 112-acre AmberPoint Business Park. The terms include creating jobs, but even that has yet to be finalized at this point, the contact said.

Houston-based Transwestern Commercial Services’ Dallas team of John Fulton, senior vice president, and Todd Jones, vice president, represented the building owner, AmberJack Ltd. Somera’s terms for the long-term deal at 301 S. Northpoint were bargained by Jack Fraker, Susan Pausky and Mari Jones, all with Cushman & Wakefield of Texas Inc. in Dallas.

Somera Communications is fine-tuning the finish-out plans right now so construction can begin in January or February, Fulton tells GlobeSt.com. The firm, eyeing an April occupancy, is configuring the warehouse/distribution space for 15,000 sf of office, 39,000 sf of production and the balance for warehouse use.

Somera of Santa Barbara has been in the market since August in search of a site to complement operations centers in Oxnard, CA and Norcross, GA. A location near the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport was considered a must-have. AmberPoint fronts Texas 121 and is two miles north of the airport. It’s also in a submarket that absorbed 1.8 million sf of industrial space through the end of the third quarter.

Fulton says talks are under way with other prospects for the balance of the structure. Another signing could come in the first quarter.

Somera will be moving in right around the same time that Staples Inc. of Framingham, MA gets the keys to a 228,250-sf office/warehouse now going up on an AmberPoint tract. Fulton says with other build-to-suits being courted that it’s too early to say when another spec project might come out of the ground in AmberPoint, an industrial park with a build-out plan for two million sf of bulk distribution product.