Sansone, Raith Capital to Build 3.7MSF Industrial Hub in El Paso

Sansone Group and Raith Capital Partners are teaming up for the first time to develop Rancho Del Rey Logistics Park, a three-phase, nearly 4 million-square-foot Class A industrial hub in El Paso, Texas. Construction of the first phase, featuring three buildings totaling roughly 1.4 million square feet, has begun and is slated for completion by the fourth quarter.

Colliers, which is handling leasing for the project, has already secured a lease agreement with Bosch, a global supplier of technology and services including mobility solutions, for approximately 414,000 square feet in the first building of Phase One. The remaining 239,055 square feet in the 652,080-square-foot building is still available.

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A Colliers team led by Tom Jones and Bob Feinberg, both senior vice presidents and principals, also put the land lease deal together for the 240-acre site. Other members of the Colliers team include Kimber Harrison, a team coordinator and associate broker, and Managing Director Rick Stoes.

Sansone Group, a St. Louis-based family-owned and operated national commercial real estate firm, and Raith Capital Partners, a New York-based commercial real estate investment firm and adviser, are planning a formal groundbreaking at the site on March 13. Catamount Construction Inc. will be the contractor for all three phases. Delivery of the remaining two phases is expected between 2025 and 2026. Details about the second and third phases are limited at this time, but the developers are planning to build a total of 2.4 million square feet of assets, including 200,000 to 300,000 square feet of cold/frozen storage, on about 147 acres.

Close to the Mexican border

The site is within 3 miles of the Ysleta-Zaragoza Port of Entry, a key U.S.-Mexico border crossing responsible for more than 80 percent of El Paso’s northbound cargo truck crossings. The developers described the El Paso industrial market as robust, noting it’s showing resilience post-pandemic, driven by increasing onshoring activities by manufacturing, logistics and distributors in Mexico.

The first phase of Rancho Del Rey Logistics Park spans approximately 85 acres at the southeast quadrant of Interstate 10 and Loop 375 in El Paso’s eastern industrial market. Building 1 will have two drive-in doors, a 40-foot clear height and potential dock positions of one per 10,000 square feet. Plans also call for 99 auto parking spaces and 63 truck parking spaces.

Building 2 is set to have up to 241,800 square feet, with two drive-in doors, a 40-foot clear height and potential dock positions of one per 10,000 square feet. It will have 145 auto parking spaces and 80 truck parking spaces. Building 3 will include about 484,000 square feet and four drive-in doors, as well as a 40-foot clear height and potential dock positions of one per 10,000 square feet. The facility will have 270 auto parking spaces and 143 truck parking spaces.

All three buildings will have a 7-inch slab on grade and ESFR sprinklers, and a total of almost 400 truck parking spaces. Building 1 will have 4000 amps of power while the other two will each have 2600 amps of power.

Strong industrial demand in El Paso

Rancho Del Rey is not Raith Capital Partners’ first El Paso investment. In June 2020, the firm teamed up with Equity Industrial Partners to build a 123,966-square-foot Class A industrial facility at 9541 Joe Rodriguez Drive, ReBusiness Online reported. Earlier in 2020, the firms had partnered to buy 22 industrial buildings with nearly 2 million square feet of warehouse, distribution, light manufacturing and office space, as well as 35 acres of land in the El Paso region, according to the El Paso Times. In April 2022, Raith and Equity announced plans to develop three speculative warehouses totaling 304,303 square feet, also in the El Paso area, as ReBusiness Online reported.

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Sansone Group has developed more than 50 million square feet of industrial, retail and multifamily projects in 28 states. In August, together with partner Broadstone Net Lease, the company broke ground on a distribution center of more than 1 million square feet for United Natural Foods Inc. in Sarasota, Fla. The facility is being built within the 300-acre master-planned SRQ Logistics Center, some 50 miles south of downtown Tampa, Fla. It is slated for completion in September.

Other recent projects include a cold storage development in the Ybor City area of Tampa and the Tac-Pal Logistics Center, a 702,450-square-foot industrial building in Palmyra, N.J., in partnership with a fund advised by Crow Holdings Capital.

More recently, SanMar Corp. selected East Coast Commerce Center, a nearly 200-acre industrial campus in the Greater Richmond area of Virginia owned by Raith and Equity, for a newly built 1.1 million-square-foot warehouse to be the home of its East Coast flagship distribution center.

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