Huge Warehouse Projects Kick Off at AllianceTexas
Dallas-Fort Worth, one of the country’s top industrial building markets with 22 million square feet under construction, is adding more warehouse space.
The Perot family’s Hillwood firm, one of the area’s biggest developers, is starting two more megawarehouses north of Fort Worth. The new AllianceTexas buildings will have about 1.3 million square feet of space and be located near Interstate 35W.
The buildings — Alliance Center North 3 and Alliance Northport 1 — are just the latest in a string of big industrial developments in Hillwood’s 26,000-acre AllianceTexas project.
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“Hillwood has leased over 3 million square feet at AllianceTexas through the first half of 2018, so this is a continuation of our aggressive speculative building program designed to meet the needs of the market by having existing product on the ground ready to occupy,” Hillwood Senior Vice President Tony Creme said.
One of the buildings will have 782,000 square feet and the other will be 500,000 square feet.
The new distribution buildings are near Fort Worth’s Alliance Airport, BNSF Railway’s Alliance Intermodal Facility, the FedEx Express Southwest Regional Hub, and UPS and FedEx shipping ground hubs.
The Alliance Center North 3 project was designed by GDA Architects and financed by Frost Bank. RGA Architects designed Alliance Northport 1, and it is financed by Southside Bank.
Hillwood’s AllianceTexas development is home to more than 488 companies and includes 43 million square feet of construction.
“Last month was the 30th anniversary of the groundbreaking at Alliance,” Creme said. “We understand this market and are comfortable making that speculative investment with these buildings.
“We try and build about 1 million square feet a year spec and have it on the ground for our customers.”
Creme said industrial building tenants often need a quick turnaround.
“Transactions are happening at a breakneck speed,” he said. “People want their buildings immediately — they don’t want to wait.”
Hillwood is seeing a variety of warehouse tenants in the market.
“With the continued influx of people to the D-FW region, there is an increasing need for consumer goods and e-commerce facilities to support those people,” Creme said.
In the past seven years, almost 100 million square feet of new warehouse projects have been built in D-FW — one of the highest totals for any market in the country.
Industrial leasing in the area during the first half of 2018 has totaled about 10 million square feet.
