USAA Lands $82M for Amazon Build-to-Suit

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USAA Real Estate has made strides in the development of Beaumont Crossroads II, a 2.8 million-square-foot logistics park in Beaumont, Calif. The company received $81.6 million in construction financing from Regions Bank for the development of one of the park’s two facilities, according to County of Riverside records.

JLL Capital Markets helped structure the two-year, floating-rate, non-recourse loan. The build-to-suit, 816,000-square-foot distribution center is triple-net-leased to an investment-grade tenant. According to CommercialEdge data, the facility will serve as an Amazon fulfillment center.

USAA Real Estate is developing Beaumont Crossroads II in a joint effort with McDonald Property Group. Building 2—subject to the recent financing—will take shape on 58.7 acres at 36900 W. Fourth St., adjacent to Building 1, a nearly 1.8 million-square-foot warehouse slated for delivery in the second quarter of 2023. 

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Construction has already started at Building 2 with the completion date yet to be announced. Development plans call for 40-foot clear heights, 48 dock-high doors and two grade-level doors. The facility will offer 447 parking spaces and 296 trailer stalls, and will be fitted with ESFR fire protection.  

The new campus is within a mile of Crossroads Logistics Center, another distribution center USAA Real Estate completed in recent years in partnership with McDonald Property Group. The park includes a 720,000-square-foot Wolverine Worldwide warehouse delivered in 2019 and a 2.6 million-square-foot Amazon fulfillment center at 1010 West 4th St. completed in 2020.

Beaumont Crossroads II is located just off US Route 60, a short distance from Interstate 10 and some 90 miles from the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.

Investors gravitate toward Amazon

According to a 2021 Lee & Associates report, the Amazon lease at Beaumont Crossroads II was among the largest Inland Empire transactions by square footage in the third quarter of last year, after Lecangs‘ 1.2 million-square-foot lease agreement with Duke Realty Corp. for an industrial facility in Perris, Calif. 

Despite a slowdown in online commerce growth in the last quarter of 2021, the sector continues to drive demand for industrial property. In the two years since the pandemic began, Amazon closed a series of deals that nearly doubled its fulfillment network. In November of last year, the e-commerce giant announced plans to open five distribution centers in Minnesota and Alabama, adding more than 3.3 million square feet to its footprint.

Meanwhile, Amazon-leased buildings are selling for nine-digit numbers. Last week, Van Trust Real Estate pocketed $103.5 million for the sale of a 1 million-square-foot Amazon fulfillment center in Jacksonville, Fla., while in December last year, Hudson Pacific paid $119 million for a 197,000-square-foot office building in Seattle leased entirely to Amazon.