Creation, Crow Holdings Break Ground on 700K-SF Avondale Campus
The 38-acre industrial project pairs 36-foot clear heights with pickleball courts in a bet on advanced manufacturing tenants.
Pickleball courts will anchor the outdoor amenities at Avondale Tech Center, a three-building industrial campus being built by Creation and a real estate fund advised by Crow Holdings Capital. The project spans 38 acres and roughly 700,000 square feet, with 36-foot clear heights, Connect CRE reports.
The buildings range from 212,184 to 254,264 square feet. The campus is designed around advanced manufacturing, research and development, and assembly, with pharmaceutical development, aerospace, semiconductor manufacturing, and defense contracting named as target industries. Alongside the pickleball courts, each building gets its own outdoor gathering area and a walking path circles the site.
The name says Tech Center, but the amenities say corporate campus. That is a deliberate turn for a product type where concrete boxes and dock doors usually do the selling. The space between the buildings is part of the product.
LGE Design Build is architect and general contractor, with JLL's Riley Gilbert, John Lydon, and Kelly Royle on leasing. Completion is targeted for Q3 2027.
Pricing and pre-leases are not disclosed in the report, leaving Avondale a ground-up speculative build. The 42,080-square-foot spread between the smallest and largest structures would let a single tenant take one building or a larger user combine space across two. A campus layout like this also lets a single large user take two buildings while a smaller supplier takes the third, all sharing the same pickleball courts and walking path. The pickleball courts and gathering areas are aimed at the people who will staff the place, not just the logistics manager doing the lease. It is a bet that occupant experience has become a competitive weapon in industrial real estate. A Q3 2027 completion target gives the developer a long runway to find tenants, and the target industries could look very different by then. The developer is effectively making the case that the workforce is the asset, and the building is just the container. The absence of any pre-lease names suggests the developer is comfortable carrying that risk. Whether that case holds by 2027 is the test.