CHICAGO — CRG, a national real estate development and investment firm, announced that it will develop The Cubes at Plainville, a 662,500-square-foot speculative warehouse facility at 27 Cross Street in Plainville, Mass., approximately 25 miles southwest of downtown Boston.
The new warehouse will add much needed space to the supply-constrained industrial landscape of the Greater Boston region. CRG expects to deliver the state-of-the-art facility in Q3 2022.
27 Cross Street is located in the South submarket of Greater Boston. The new-construction, best-in-class facility will be just minutes from Routes 495 South and 1A, offering immediate access to Interstates 95, 90, and 93. According to Newmark Knight Frank, the Boston industrial market has dipped below 2% vacancy over the past 24 months.
With demand continuing to reach all-time highs, Newmark reports over 20 million square feet of active requirements in the market. But strong barriers to entry in the Greater Boston market, such as permitting hurdles, lack of suitable sites and building material shortages, have diminished new developers’ abilities to keep pace with this feverish demand. Furthermore, economic development is now entirely dependent on new-construction deliveries. As further reported by Newmark, the Greater Boston industrial market has no existing class A warehouse options that exceed 100,000 square feet, and new inventory is not anticipated to come online until late 2022 and 2023. The Cubes at Plainville is one of only two major projects underway that plans to deliver much-needed warehouse space in 2022.
“Boston is a core logistics market with significant barriers to entry and a consistently decreasing vacancy rate,” said Frank Petkunas, partner and senior vice president of the Northeast region for CRG. “Boston has very few modern warehouse options at a time when tenant demand is at an all-time high. The Cubes at Plainville will offer the size, location and modern building specifications to meet the needs of today’s users, while creating jobs, generating tax revenue and ultimately driving value for our investors.”
The Cubes at Plainville will feature a 36’ unobstructed ceiling height, ESFR sprinklers, 126 dock doors, 361 auto spaces and 145 trailer spaces. CRG sourced the land acquisition and is the developer for the project; its parent company, Clayco, will lead construction, with subsidiary Lamar Johnson Collaborative as the architect.
“This Cubes at Plainville will offer modern components that warehouse users need to increase operational efficiencies,” said Shawn Clark, president of CRG. “Proximity to strong labor pools and the ability to serve concentrated consumer bases in Boston, Providence and Hartford will create an attractive value proposition for any prospective tenants.”
The project adds to the expanding portfolio of U.S. Logistics Fund II (“USLF II”), CRG’s industrial investment fund launched earlier this year to develop $1.5 billion of new state-of-the-art e-commerce and distribution facilities across key logistics markets throughout the U.S. USLF II is the successor fund to U.S. Logistics Fund I, which launched in 2018 and invested in the successful development of $421 million of modern logistics facilities under The Cubes brand.
CRG is a privately held real estate development firm that has developed more than 9,000 acres of land and delivered over 200 million square feet of commercial, industrial, institutional and multifamily assets exceeding $12 billion in value. CRG leverages a powerful North American platform with local market expertise and offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Columbus, Southern California, St. Louis and Philadelphia.
The Cubes is a North American industrial brand owned and developed by CRG. The Cubes represents CRG’s philosophy of developing for the future and anticipating the enhanced needs of tomorrow’s modern warehouse user. The Cubes are designed with an emphasis on sustainability, and implement state-of-the-art specifications, including maximum clear heights, dock doors and trailer storage to keep pace with the shift to consumer-centric logistic strategies. The Cubes are located on strategic sites that take into consideration both logistics and labor supply, always with the end user in mind.
