St. Louis Warehouse Vacancies Fall
Date Posted: August 9, 2016
Posted In: News,
From St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Available industrial real estate in the St. Louis area has fallen by nearly half from its post-recession peak of 16 percent, according to a new report from real estate firm CBRE.
The report looked at inland ports across the country and their industrial property markets, including a case study of St. Louis. Available industrial space in St. Louis stood at about 8 percent, according to CBRE, and new space was growing at about 2 percent in the first quarter, faster than the national average of 1.6 percent.
“St. Louis always has had optimal positioning to reach a large sector of the population, and supply chain and e-commerce users have served as a spark plug to ignite the market,” Jon Hinds, first vice president for CBRE’s Industrial and Logistics team in St. Louis said in a statement on the report. “A number of new state-of-the-art facilities in the area have been infill, attracting a diverse array of new tenants to prime facilities without having to sacrifice on location.”
The area has several large speculative warehouse and industrial buildings under construction. One will start soon in the Aviator Business Park in Hazelwood, and construction of others could come at the site of the former Chrysler assembly facility in Fenton.
Other speculative space was underway in Edwardsville at the Gateway and Lakeview commerce centers, but online retailer Amazon leased two warehouses for new distribution centers before construction was complete.