Tag Archive for: supply chain
Incentives, industrial leasing strategy start paying off for Hunt Midwest
Rob Roberts – Kansas City Business Journal
Hunt Midwest officials are crediting incentives and a focus on smaller industrial tenants for strong leasing activity at the company’s Logistics I and II buildings in the Hunt Midwest Business Center, a 2,500-acre development at Interstate 435 and Parvin Road in Kansas City.
The following new HMBC tenants recently qualified for 25-year, 100 percent property tax abatements through an Enhanced Enterprise Zone that the business center is located within:
- American Tire Distributors Inc. opened a 108,860-square-foot regional warehouse and distribution center in HMBC Logistics II, a 200,000-square-foot, multitenant warehouse and distribution facility.
- Orbis Corp. opened a 40,777-square-foot service center for its Reusable Packaging Management division in HMBC Logistics II. The service center focuses on inventory management and cleaning of plastic reusable packaging used in the food, beverage and consumer goods supply chain.
- Spartan Motors Inc. expanded its cargo van and fleet upfit assembly operation in HMBC Logistics I to 63,169 square feet. The expansion comes less than a year after Spartan launched its all-new service line in HMBC Logistics I, which also is a 200,000-square-foot warehouse and distribution facility.
- A leading supplier to the e-commerce industry will launch a 37,888-square-foot manufacturing and fulfillment center in April at HMBC Logistics I, its first Midwest location.
“These leases validate Hunt Midwest’s decision to invest in multitenant facilities geared to tenants ranging from 40,000 square feet to over 100,000 square feet,” Hunt Midwest CEO Ora Reynolds said in a release. “Phase 5 of the Hunt Midwest Business Center includes a third 200,000-square-foot multitenant building along with room for additional buildings ranging from 450,000 to 1.2 million square feet. As businesses grow, we will have the inventory to meet their growing demands within HMBC.”
The abatements for qualified companies available through the Enhanced Enterprise Zone are based on investment and job creation.
“The EEZ is a game-changer for companies looking to locate in HMBC,” Mike Bell, Hunt Midwest’s vice president of commercial real estate, said in the release. “With the tax incentives offered, companies are benefiting greatly from substantial savings.”
With immediate proximity to FedEx and UPS hubs and a location that’s minutes from interstates 35, 29 and 70, HMBC also offers companies the ability to reach 85 percent of the U.S. market within two days while benefiting from one of the Midwest’s strongest labor pools.
“Hunt Midwest offers what we term the ‘three Ls’ of industrial real estate: location, logistics and labor,” Bell said in the release. “We are seeing a cluster effect of automotive, 3PL and e-commerce companies taking advantage of HMBC’s central location, strong workforce and direct access to public transportation.”
HMBC ultimately will include an additional 8 million square feet of master-planned, Class A warehouse and distribution space in future phases.
Serving as Hunt Midwest’s partner in the development is HSA Commercial Real Estate, a full-service firm specializing in office, industrial, retail and health care real estate leasing, management, marketing, development and financing. Besides developing and acquiring more than 50 million square feet of commercial real estate nationwide with a total value in excess of $2.5 billion, HSA Commercial Real Estate has represented owners and tenants in more than 10,000 transactions and manages a property portfolio in excess of 16 million square feet.
Hunt Midwest educates KC brokers, links two development worlds
Autumn MorningSky – MetroWire Media
For the last five years, it’s been impossible to discuss Kansas City’s development boom without mention of the powerhouse that is Hunt Midwest. The sister company of the Kansas City Chiefs has saturated local real estate news and has even graced a number of major national news outlets this year – from NPR to CNN – who are fascinated with the flourishing underground business world the company has created. Even outside of SubTropolis, Hunt Midwest has grown other segments of its business by leaps and bounds, including its surface industrial park, data center, senior housing projects and more.
But it’s been five years since the company brought in the local brokerage to educate them on the range of Hunt Midwest’s offerings. That changed last week when the company brought in more than 50 brokers and numerous officials from various economic development groups around Kansas City, including a slew of new faces Hunt Midwest CEO Ora Reynolds wanted to educate and get to know.
“Five years ago, we didn’t do as much vertical construction as we do now. We were known as someone who would sell a piece of ground that someone could build on, but now our focus is that we can provide all the options: We can sell you ground, we can sell you ground and build your facility for you, or we can do a build-to-suit and lease it for you. You’ve got a lot of different options to cover the full spectrum of users out there,” Reynolds said. “We also wanted them to understand the strategic niches we’re going after – automotive upfitters and suppliers, e-commerce, fulfillment companies, and government users and tech users – and talk about our strategy, which is the synergy between the underground and the surface.”
The Hidden Metropolis Beneath Kansas City
Great Big Story
One-hundred-fifty feet below Kansas City, in a 270-million-year-old limestone deposit, more than 1600 people work in the world’s largest business labyrinth. They basically work in the Batcave, and it’s probably more interesting than your office. As seen on CNN — Check out the video essay here.
Hunt Midwest is a full-service real estate development company with a focus on industrial, commercial, retail, mission critical, multifamily, senior living and residential real estate. The Hunt Midwest portfolio is anchored by SubTropolis, the world’s largest underground business complex.
Located in the heart of the Midwest, this Kansas City, Missouri-based company is developer of over 6,200 acres of commercial, retail, industrial and residential property, and owner/developer of SubTropolis, the world’s largest underground business complex.
SubTropolis is a subterranean, 1,150-acre industrial park in Kansas City, Missouri, with over 6 million square feet of leasable space. The complex is home to more than 55 local, national and international businesses with 1,600 employees. SubTropolis is an ENERGY STAR certified warehouse facility. Hunt Midwest’s headquarters is located within SubTropolis.
Kansas City Will Benefit From the Shift to E-commerce
Dick Ringer – Assistant General Manager, Hunt Midwest
With its central U.S. location, great labor force and affordable lease rates, Kansas City offers an exciting value proposition for e-commerce companies, and the time is right for deal-making in the industrial market.
Online sales currently comprise about 7 percent of all retail sales and are growing at a rate of 15 percent a year. E-commerce is ultimately expected to account for 50 percent of all retail sales. This shift to e-commerce creates an opportunity for brokers and developers in Kansas City’s industrial market as new fulfillment centers open.
As the online sales industry has matured, so has the consumer’s demand for timely and inexpensive delivery. The fact that 85% of the U.S. is accessible via 2-day shipping by truck from Kansas City is a strong selling point for e-commerce companies scouting fulfillment and distribution sites.
It wasn’t too long ago that customers didn’t mind waiting more than a week to receive online orders, and we didn’t even mind paying for shipping. Now we’ve grown accustomed to free shipping and two-day delivery. Of course, the faster that e-commerce companies can deliver products to the doorstep, the more they sell. And retailers probably don’t need to be reminded of the cost benefits of shipping by truck compared to shipping by air.
A significant advantage for Kansas City—especially when it comes to moving goods manufactured overseas– is its presence as the largest rail hub in the nation in terms of tonnage, which means lower transportation costs. Products that are produced overseas can be transported across the ocean on a ship, taken by rail from ports on the coast to one of the rail intermodal yards in Kansas City (which is far more economical than trucking on long hauls), then the product is taken from the rail yard to an e-commerce fulfillment center where it can be shipped by truck to online buyers as it is ordered.
Since online sales volume directly correlates to the speed of delivery, proximity to hubs like FedEx and/or UPS, along with the availability of late pickups, is invaluable. Another important consideration is the access to fiber, which is plentiful in the metro area. Robust, redundant fiber is essential for e-commerce companies to process orders quickly for delivery. Troy Brown the EVP of OmniChannel & Marketing for Zumiez who cater to the younger electronic savvy demographic, said that if their customers don’t get a shipping confirmation within half an hour of placing an order, Zumiez may very well get a phone call asking “what’s up?”
Finally, Kansas City’s labor force is among its strongest selling points. E-commerce fulfillment centers tend to have more employees per 1,000 square feet than typical warehousing operations. And because orders rise during peak seasons and times, fulfillment operations need to be located where there is a good temporary workforce available.
Here’s a novel way to slash your business expenses in half: Relocate 100 feet underground.
In the Midwest, many businesses have done just that.
In states like Missouri, Kentucky and Pennsylvania, there’s a growing number of firms doing business in subterranean spaces that were once mines. Starting in the 1960s, these spaces were rehabilitated for commercial use.
SubTropolis, in Kansas City, Mo., is a well-known example.
The underground business complex was an active limestone mine in the 1940s, owned by real estate firm Hunt Midwest. As mining started to taper off, it left a vast network of empty caves.
“In the 1960s came the ‘a-ha!’ moment,” said Ora Reynolds, president and CEO of Hunt Midwest. “These spaces could be reused.”
Since then, Hunt Midwest has gradually transformed the defunct spaces.
“Six million square feet of it is ready, and we have room to build out another 8 million square feet based on demand,” said Dick Ringer, SubTropolis’ general manager.
Today, 1,600 people to work at one of the 52 businesses that lease space in SubTropolis’ space, including tech and manufacturing firms, consumer products companies and auto firms.
“Ford at one time used to store its Mavericks here,” said Reynolds. And the U.S. Postal Service currently stores $2 billion worth of stamps in SubTropolis.
“The constant temperature and humidity [it’s 68 to 72 degrees year-round] are ideal for storing stamps and other products,” she said.
Other advantages: There’s underground parking. Construction costs are low since there’s already a natural roof in place — all they need to build are walls.
“We’re a ‘green’ workspace since we’re conserving natural resources,” Ringer said. “And by being deep underground, we’re a pretty secure location for businesses.”
Employees enter SubTropolis through one of 19 entrances that accommodate cars and trucks. This also facilitates cross-ventillation of natural air, although tenants can also add air conditioning and dehumidifiers. Go to CNNMoney.com for more…
Now is the Time to Tell Kansas City’s Ecommerce Story
Mike Bell – Vice President & General Manager, Hunt Midwest
Hunt Midwest’s SubTropolis recently caught the attention of The Wall Street Journal. The world’s largest underground business park has been making quite a few headlines lately for its success in attracting Ford upfitters to “Automotive Alley,” our branded destination for auto industry partners.
We love making headlines, so now it’s time to spread the word about SubTropolis’ push into ecommerce. FoodServiceWarehouse.com (FSW) opens a 475,000-square foot warehouse and distribution center creating a 1,100,000 SF ecommerce cluster. It’s the largest 2014 commercial build-to-suit project in the metro.
FSW cited SubTropolis’ high-speed connectivity, energy savings and ability to rapidly expand its footprint in its decision. The lease includes an option to grow to almost 800,000 square feet in four years. Go to Mike’s LinkedIn post for more…
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