Industrial park breaks ground Wednesday in northeast Las Vegas

Another speculative industrial project has joined a long list of planned developments.

VanTrust Real Estate is scheduled to break ground Wednesday on Northgate Distribution Center, a 120-acre industrial park at Interstate 15 and Lamb Boulevard.

Kansas City, Mo.-based VanTrust will kick off the project with two spec buildings: a 247,750-square-foot warehouse and a 558,000-square-foot distribution facility that would be the largest local spec industrial space built in the current boom, which began in September 2014 with Prologis' 464,203-square-foot Las Vegas Corporate Center No. 19 at Pecos and Gowan roads.

Garrett Toft, first vice president with commercial brokerage CBRE Las Vegas and a leasing agent for Northgate, said the project hasn't signed tenants yet.

If other spec projects are any indication, it may not be long before tenants line up: Industrial developers have finished four North Las Vegas buildings totaling 1.4 million square feet in the last year. Three of those buildings, totaling about 1 million square feet, were leased before completion. Plus, Prologis has a tenant for a 195,000-square-foot building in North Las Vegas that has yet to break ground.

The industrial sector has recovered most markedly among local commercial real estate submarkets. Vacancies fell to 5.1 percent in the fourth quarter, according to numbers from CBRE Las Vegas. That compares with 19.5 percent in the office market and 9.8 percent on the retail side.

Depending on how quickly Northgate's first two buildings lease up, future phases could total another 1.2 million square feet, Toft said.

Martin-Harris Construction is building the project's first phase, which is scheduled for completion in late 2016.

The companies didn't release a development cost.

Contact Jennifer Robison at jrobison@reviewjournal.com. Follow @_JRobison on Twitter.