Merit Partners, Lexington Realty Begin Work on Phoenix-Area Project

by Barbra Murray

Work has gotten underway on Merit Partners Inc. and Lexington Realty Trust’s two speculative industrial buildings at PV 303, a 1,600-acre, master-planned business park just outside Phoenix in Goodyear, Ariz. Acting on behalf of the development team, Stevens-Leinweber Construction broke ground on Buildings 3 and 4, which will encompass 880,000 square feet of Class A space.

PV 303, offering 2 miles of freeway frontage along Loop 303, sits roughly 25 miles west of downtown Phoenix.

PV 303, Buildings 3 and 4, Goodyear, Ariz.

The park is a work in progress and is presently home to 7 million square feet of completed or in-progress industrial facilities. At full buildout, PV 303 will encompass in excess of 20 million square feet of industrial, office and retail space in the burgeoning Loop 303 Corridor.

Building 3 will deliver 488,400 square feet, while Building 4 will add 392,000 square feet to the market. Designed by architecture firm Butler Design Group, both facilities will offer such coveted features as 40-foot clear height and cross-dock configuration. CBRE’s Pat Feeney and Danny Calihan are in place as the exclusive leasing brokers for the industrial properties.

Familiar territory

SLC is no stranger to PV 303. A leading Phoenix-based general contractor with plenty of construction credits to its name across the Valley, the company has completed a handful of industrial projects within the park, including the build-out of the Ball manufacturing warehouse, tenant improvement for Boeing/XPO, the build-to-suit warehouse and logistics facility for HD Supply and a distribution center for Abercrombie and Fitch. Additionally, SLC is presently working on another project for Merit within the PV 303, an 802,000-square-foot shell building.

Spec projects are a welcome product in metropolitan Phoenix. “Net absorption set a record in the third quarter, surpassing 15 million square feet year-to-date,” according to a third quarter 2021 report by CBRE. “Net absorption continued to significantly outpace deliveries.”

Third-quarter net absorption totaled just over 3.2 million square feet in the Greater Phoenix area and the vacancy rate dropped to a record low of 4.2 percent. The vacancy rate in North Goodyear, home to PV 303, was even lower at just 2.6 percent.

With construction activity already underway, SLC expects to deliver Buildings 3 and 4 in the summer of 2022.