Avalon Investment Readies a Third Speculative Project

Last year, Avalon Investment Co. did the unthinkable. It built two industrial buildings without first locating a tenant — an anomaly in a struggling real estate market. Now, with the Castaic buildings fully leased, Avalon is doing it again — only bigger. “There was no one else in the market building at the time so it makes you wonder if you are an idiot,” Avalon Vice President Weston Cookler said. The developer expects to break ground in late summer on a 45,000-square-foot speculative industrial building sandwiched in between its two smaller occupied industrial properties. What is now vacant land will be home to an environmentally-friendly building with a 30-foot clearance, a high-tech sprinkler system, four dock-level doors and four drive-thru doors. Avalon, Cookler said, also has the option of dividing the building in two for multiple tenants. The building, Cookler said, should come online in about 18 months. Avalon held back on the larger speculative development at its Avalon Business Center until the market improved, Cookler said. “At the time during the recession we didn’t want to lay out the money to build that size — especially when there was a lot of vacancy in that size range,” he said. Now was the ideal time to jump on the new building, Cookler said. Vacancy is declining in the Santa Clarita Valley and, he said, he and his father have more free time now that the other buildings are built and occupied. Valencia Fulfillment Inc. became Avalon’s first tenant when it moved into a nearly 11,000-square-foot building last summer. 4SameDay, a distribution company, filled the second building on the property, a roughly 14,000-square-foot space, earlier this year. And for the firm’s latest building, Cookler said he and his father Jonathan are getting interest from companies who want them to build the firm’s latest creation to their desired specifications. If that happens, Cookler said, the opening date could be delayed. But Avalon may not have to look far for a tenant. Jose Corona, president of Valencia Fulfillment, said his company is already outgrowing its current space. When asked what Valencia Fulfillment will do to accommodate that growth, Corona said: “Hopefully (Avalon’s) building will be ready in a couple of years.”