When looking for real estate large enough to house a 150,000-square foot industrial building, Bob Qualls Sr. and his associates found a 23-acre property in Thomas Rose Industrial Park in La Porte and purchased it. La Porte Economic Advancement Partnership Executive Director Bert Cook noted how they picked the perfect location for the building.
“Everything we’re looking at today is a brand-new infrastructure that was built in 2015-2016, so we had readied ourselves for this type of development,” Cook said. “When you have developers for this, they look for a wide area that would be the best site to put a building up. This site is the ideal location for a building like this. It’s a large building; it’s 150,000-square feet that they’re going to be building.”
This industrial building is projected to reach completion early in the summer of 2021, but the marketing of the building has already begun. These pre-release marketing efforts have begun as those involved in the project would like to have a buyer lined-up upon the building’s completion.
“Within 24 hours after we posted about development of this building about a week ago, we had seven calls on the property,” Managing Broker at McColly Bennett Commercial Advantage Lori Tubbs said. “We’re really happy that those callers were confident enough to take this big step.”
This spacious facility is customizable for one or multiple tenants, and could potentially expand to 300,000-square feet in the future. While the daily use of this building will depend on the tenants who make the location home to their businesses, the underlying purpose is to further expand growth in La Porte.
“This is big for the City of La Porte,” said Tim Franke of the La Porte City Council. “We’re going to have more space and more companies coming into our city, which creates new jobs. That has been a top priority of ours – to bring in jobs for the city – and this will do exactly that.”
As James Shoffner, Owner of J. Shoffner General Contractor, Inc., can attest, this project has been in the works for years and will not only provide jobs in the future but will also secure the jobs of his staff over the next year.
“I have a personal involvement in this project,” Shoffner said. “Bob Qualls is a good friend of mine, and we’ve talked about this for many years. It’s finally happening. It’s personal in a way, but it’s also good for my company because it guarantees us work throughout the year.”
Cook is thrilled to see different organizations, companies, and investors come together for this project. He believes this reflects a love for La Porte.
“We have private investors who are choosing to invest a significant amount of money,” Cook said. “This is a $6,500,000 project. They are choosing to invest in our community when they could do the same in plenty of other communities that would love to have them. I think that’s one of the big things that there is a lot of momentum going on in La Porte. People and companies want to be here.”
To learn more about this project, visit https://laportepartnership.com/.