$16.5 Million Logistics Center Going Up
REDLANDS – An Atlanta-based developer is primed to start building a 225,078-square-foot distribution center on Alabama Street this month.
The developer, Oakmont Industrial Group, is overseeing the development of the $16.5 million Alabama Logistics Center, a facility that will help manufacturers take their products all over Southern California and beyond.
“This will be a modern distribution facility with upgraded features,” said Art Ansoorian, a public relations specialist for Oltmans Construction Co., the project’s Whittier-based general contractor. “This facility is designed to allow manufacturers of all kinds of goods all over the west.”
Ansoorian said Oltmans Construction is no stranger to building distribution warehouses like the Alabama Logistics Center, having participated or overseen the construction of facilities all over Southern California, including buildings on both March and Norton Air Force bases.
The warehouse will sit on approximately 11 acres of land at 9090 North Alabama St., a lot strategically chosen for its close proximity to interstates 10 and 210.
Ansoorian said the warehouse, though impressive in size, is not quite a quarter of the size of many of the distribution centers that can be seen all over the region.
“The Inland Empire is at the forefront of providing logistics facilities like this,” Ansoorian said. “It’s not uncommon to see facilities as big as 1 million square feet. In comparison, this building isn’t very big at all.”
The building has been designed to meet the requirements of the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED certification. The LEED building rating system gauges the overall environmental and energy conservation of any given project.
“Obviously, there is a big push on that right now,” Ansoorian said. “The facility will maintain a certain amount of energy efficiency.”
“The Alabama Street project is well located in what is now an infill Redlands market and represents an opportunity for Oakmont Industrial Group to bring an efficiently sized building to the area,” said Michael Johnson, Oakmont’s vice president of development.
Ansoorian described the infill market of Redlands as one that is prime for redevelopment.
“Infill is the reuse of an area that hasn’t seen development in a while,” he said.
The new facility will not directly benefit Redlands because it lies in an unicorporated patch of county land known as the “doughnut hole.”
“If that project is in the doughnut hole, we won’t have anything to do with it because it’s not technically a part of Redlands,” said Paul Foster, president of the Redlands Chamber of Commerce and a member of the Planning Commission.