The new face of industrial space

While there are various market forces in play that influence industrial tenants in northern Nevada, never before have new industrial building components and technology been such a strong influence. Today's industrial market offers an abundance of warehouse space that will allow tenants to experience the latest and greatest technology available and it is these buildings that have raised the bar and defined the new class A industrial standard for our northern Nevada market.

Our current market inventory of available industrial properties includes a whopping 3.15 million square feet of brand-new, high-cube warehouse space that has never been occupied.

These new, state-of-the-art buildings are located in the Spanish Springs, North Valleys (Stead), and McCarran (Tahoe Reno Industrial Center) submarkets and represent some, if not all, of the following new class A industrial specifications:

Size: These warehouse buildings range in size from 400,000 square feet to over 630,000 square feet.

Divisibility: 100 percent of these warehouses were designed to be demised for multiple tenants and expansion. As a general rule, divisibility ranges in increments of roughly 50,000 square feet or 75,000 square feet. It has to be noted, however, that owners of many of these new structures prefer a minimum occupancy of 100,000 square feet or more.

Clear height: These warehouses have clear heights of 30 to 32 feet from the finish floor elevation to the bottom of the lowest structural roof beam.

Configuration: 100 percent of these buildings are in a cross-dock configuration with dock loading on each side of the building. This allows tenants the option of logically separating shipping and receiving areas of operations.

Dimensions: All of these buildings are designed as a rectangle. The dimension of the largest of these buildings is approximately 470 feet deep by 1,300 feet long.

Column spacing: The vast majority of these warehouses have 50 by 50 or 50 by 52 foot column spacing with a wider staging bay, also known as a "speed bay," which is typically 60 by 50 feet wide, adjacent to the dock doors. This staging bay provides more column-free space for product staging and truck loading.

Dock loading: Given that these warehouses have been designed for high-volume distribution users, developers either build the maximum number of dock doors or at least design concrete panel knock-outs for the future addition of more dock doors. The standard dock door is now 9 feet by 10 feet and these buildings have as many as 125 dock doors for one single building. Additionally, each of these buildings also has 12-by-14 foot drive-in doors located so that each tenant can have at least one grade-level door.

Dock packages: The current standard has become 35,000-pound dock levelers, weather seals, dock lights, insulated doors with small viewing windows, and either z-guards or bollards to protect the door rails from fork-lift damage.

Truck courts: These buildings have plenty of room for truck access ranging from 110 feet to as much as 185 feet. They also have wide truck ingress and egress lanes throughout the developments designed for the modern 53-foot trailer and long tandem-axle conventional tractors, which are so prominently utilized by most trans-continental truck load carriers today.

HVAC: 100 percent of these buildings utilize natural gas fired Cambridge heating and ventilation units with a high degree of programmability. In addition to heating, these units can be programmed to draw cooler air into the warehouse at night.

Fire protection: 100 percent of these buildings utilize ESFR (Early Suppression Fast Response) fire sprinkler technology and typically provide 75 PSI service.

Floor thickness and flatness: Six-inch, 4,000 PSI, reinforced concrete, with a flat floor designation which allows for narrow aisle and wire guided man-up style material handling equipment.

LEED certification: At least two of the available properties have achieved varying levels of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. This means that they have been developed to meet the LEED requirements as they relate to energy savings, water efficiency, carbon dioxide emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, stewardship of resources, and sensitivity to their impacts.

Parking: All of these projects have a large amount of surrounding land which can be used for employee parking and/or tractor/trailer parking.

Skylights: These new projects seek to utilize a large number of skylights for natural lighting and energy efficiency. Skylight coverage in these buildings ranges from 1 percent to 2 percent or the entire roof surface area.

Lighting: T5 lighting has become the standard. Lights are typically installed on flexible whips to accommodate various tenant racking designs and lighting standards. Some buildings have installed motion sensors on each light to achieve a greater level of energy efficiency.

Office configurations: 100 percent of these buildings offer build-to-suit office designs. Landlords will work with tenants to design and build custom office/warehouse build-outs for each individual tenant need.

Electrical power: 4,000 to 6,000 Amps of 480-volt, 3-phase power is typical for these buildings and distribution is flexible.

Communications infrastructure: The vast majority of these facilities have fiber optic communications infrastructure pulled to the inside of the buildings for tenant use.

Expansion: Given the large nature of these buildings, landlords are able to offer tenants flexible expansion plans for the future. If adjacent space is not available to the tenant, each of these projects are phases of multi-building projects and landlords are willing to consider expansion and/or relocation within the same project, should the tenant need it.

Given this great abundance of industrial buildings employing this advanced construction technology and components, it shouldn't be surprising that we have seen tenant decisions to consolidate and upgrade their premises be influenced by the opportunity to take advantage of the new class A industrial building standard.

Mike McCabe, is a senior vice president with the industrial team of Colliers International in Reno, and Aaron Somer is an associate on the industrial team. Contact them at 823-9666 or mmccabe@colliersreno.com and asomer@colliersreno.com.

Commercial real estate professionals who would like to contribute to this column can contact John Seelmeyer at info@nnbw.biz.