Goodman Birtcher in Irvine is getting busy with its plans to become one of the country’s biggest developers of large-scale industrial developments.
The company, the North American subsidiary of Australia-based Goodman Group, broke ground this month on a $150 million logistics center in Rancho Cucamonga, its first development in Southern California.
The Inland Empire project, on about 75 acres, will have two buildings totaling about 1.6 million square feet. The speculative development, among the largest industrial projects to break ground in the region in years, is scheduled to open in phases between next March and May.
The buildings will be about five miles northeast of the LA/Ontario International Airport and will be available for rent.
The center is being called the Goodman Logistics Center Rancho Cucamonga and will offer “the only distribution warehouse space of this size in the local market,” said Brandon Birtcher, chief executive of Goodman Birtcher.
“The project positions us well to take advantage of the significant demand for class A logistics and warehousing space in the key Inland Empire West market, particularly for big-box facilities of greater than 500,000 square feet,” he said.
The groundbreaking comes about two years after Irvine-based Birtcher Development & Investments teamed with Goodman Group—the world’s second largest industrial property owner—to build large industrial developments across the U.S.
That deal resulted in Birtcher and its staff essentially becoming the U.S. management office of Goodman, which has $19 billion in assets under management across the world.
Since the venture’s creation, Goodman Birtcher said it has secured development sites in markets including California, Pennsylvania and New Jersey that provide a 15-million-square-foot development pipeline.
The company said $1.5 billion in development work is expected to take place at its sites over the next three years.
Much of the work now looks likely to be in Southern California. Besides Rancho Cucamonga, Goodman Birtcher said it has 269 acres of developable land in the region, all of which are in various stages of planning.
Other locations include a 30-acre site in Fontana, a 181-acre site in Eastvale, a 53-acre site in Santa Fe Springs, and a 5-acre site in Compton.
The sites, along with the Rancho Cucamonga development, could result in 6.2 million square feet of industrial buildings, according to Birtcher.
