Improving Business in the Wilmington Region

Focus Shifts to Continued Build-Out at Wilmington Trade Center

With Amazon’s new operations filling out Pender Commerce Park, attention is now turning to Wilmington Trade Center, a 212- acre master-planned industrial park in Greater Wilmington that is expected to grow to 3.3 million square feet of Class A industrial facilities at full buildout. Edgewater Ventures and McKinley Building Company continue to advance Phase II of the project, a 185-acre expansion of the park located on U.S. Highway 421 near I-140 in New Hanover County. New Hanover County’s Board of Commissioners recently approved a $3.3 million incentive package to help facilitate the development of Wilmington Trade Center, the largest such commitment in county history. The funds assisted in bringing infrastructure to the site, which could accommodate another 1,500 jobs and more than $80 million in capital investment.

Phase I comprises the initial three buildings within Wilmington Trade Center, which total more than 415,000 square feet and are 100% leased to eight tenants. Now operating there are Coastal Carriers, Paperfoam Packaging USA, Global Laser Enrichment, Trane U.S. Inc., New Hanover County, Glass Warehouse, Macomb Group, and AIT Home Delivery.
Phase II is off to a strong start with the recent completion of Building 4, a 152,887 square foot 32’ clear building that is 86% leased to two tenants – American Tire Distributors (109,229 SF) and Red Bull Distribution (21,818 SF). Building 7 was also recently completed and added another 152,887 square feet to the park. The facility already has significant leasing interest according to Chris Norvell, the lead partner within Edgewater Venture’s industrial development group.

“We have extraordinary momentum within Wilmington Trade Center and plan to keep building speculative buildings as long as the demand is there,” said Norvell. “We just added Building 7, bringing our total to over 720,000 square feet, and we’re in for site plan approval on Buildings 5 and 6 which will tip the scales in the park to over one million square feet.”
“We develop industrial sites all around the Carolinas but there’s something special about Wilmington Trade Center,” added Norvell. “I call Wilmington home and I care deeply about providing it with best-in-class product so we can continue to recruit quality employers to the region.”

Wilmington Trade Center’s Building 8 site also boasts one of the only pad-ready sites capable of building up to 1,000,000 square feet in the Carolinas. The site also has the potential to provide significant power availability to manufacturing users given its adjacency to three Duke Energy transmission lines capable of providing up to 300 megawatts of power.

“We’re giving strong consideration to going spec on Building 8,” said Mike Massardo, also a partner within Edgewater Ventures’ industrial team. “If we build on a speculative basis, it will likely be approximately 500,000 square feet with the site permitted to immediately expand up to 1,000,000 square feet. The significant power potential of the site makes it extremely compelling.”

Edgewater recently had tremendous success with an identical development concept in Johnston County. At CrossPoint Distribution Center in Benson, North Carolina, the group constructed a 500,000 square foot Class A facility which was pad-ready for expansion to 1,000,000 square feet. The formula enabled the firm to land Vulcan Elements from Research Triangle Park in Durham who is presently expanding the building to full capacity to make rare-earth magnets in partnership with the U.S. government, adding an expected 1,000 jobs to the area.
“There’s no reason we can’t duplicate our recent success in Benson at Wilmington Trade Center,” added Massardo.