Hunt Midwest is on the hunt for CRE opportunities outside of Kansas City – The developer, owned by the Lamar Hunt family, is building a nearly half-million-sf industrial center in South Carolina
John Caulfield, Senior Editor – Building Design+Construction

Hunt Midwest, a Kansas City-based commercial real estate company, kicked off its expansion into the Greenville-Spartanburg, S.C., market with the speculative development of the 476,280-sf Fort Prince Logistics Center, located on 47 acres in the master planned Fort Prince Industrial Park in Lyman, S.C., 11 miles west of Spartanburg.

The project, which is already under construction, is scheduled for completion in the fourth quarter of this year. The Building Team includes Seamon Whiteside (CE), LS3P (building design), and Evans General Contractors (GC). Colliers is handling the leasing.

FLEXIBLE DESIGN
The Logistics Center will open with 189 parking stalls, expandable to 385. There will be a 135-ft-deep truck court and up to 125 tractor trailer parking stalls. The building’s features include 48 dock positions (expandable to 117) with 36-ft-high clearances, mechanical dock equipment, 7-inch-thick concrete slab flooring, and ESRF sprinkler system, and motion-sensor LED lighting.

Hunt Midwest is deploying design-build project delivery “to lock in construction costs,” and allow for “maximum flexibility for logistics, manufacturing, and distribution users,” said Tony Borchers, Hunt Midwest’s Vice President of Acquisitions and Development, in a prepared statement. (The company did not disclose the cost of this project.)

The Logistics Center will have access to Interstate 85 (which connects to Charlotte and Atlanta), South Carolina’s Inland Port Greer, and GSP International Airport. It will be near BMW’s plant and adjacent to a $450 million, 720,000-sf Walmart distribution center for fresh and frozen groceries that’s scheduled to open in 2024.

A SOUGHT-AFTER MARKET
Michael Bell, Hunt Midwest’s Vice President of Commercial Real Estate, said his company was drawn to the Greenville-Spartanburg market by the state’s “highly skilled labor force,” as well as the new facility’s proximity to FedEx that “will greatly benefit a diverse group of tenants.”

Another developer, Rockefeller Group, is about to break ground in Greenville/Spartanburg on Duncan Logistics Center, a three-building development totaling 827,000 sf that MCA Architects designed and Harper General Contractors will build in two phases.

Hunt Midwest is part of the Lamar Hunt family of businesses, and has $1.5 billion and 2,500-plus acres of development projects in Kansas City and Dallas-Fort Worth. Last summer, the company completed its first industrial project outside of Kansas City, the $22 million 322,831-sf Blankenbaker Logistics Center in Louisville, Ky., which is fully leased to Piston Automotive. Hunt MIdwest has plans to expand further into the Southeastern region of the U.S.