Davis JV's Gastonia box is flexible by design

The Davis Companies and Intersect Development Group will jointly build a 462,000-square-foot Class-A distribution building at 2550 Jenkins Dairy Road in Gastonia, North Carolina, with completion expected in January 2027, Connect CRE reports. Its cross-dock design carries 40-foot clear heights, 100 dock doors, 215 trailer parking spaces and 328 auto parking spaces. An ESFR sprinkler system, a full circulating loop road and a secured truck court aim to serve modern logistics and manufacturing users and support tenant operations and workforce access.

The feature set is not where this project distinguishes itself; the more telling choice is the layout's flexibility, which can be delivered as one footprint for a single user or divided for multiple tenants, with the loop road and truck court designed to work in either configuration. That is the correct hedge for a development of this size.

A 462,000-square-foot building designed for one tenant alone would put the entire lease-up on that tenant's timetable. A structure that can be subdivided keeps the marketing effort alive in pieces: lease half, then pursue a larger requirement for the remainder, or land the big user from the start. Flexibility, of course, is not free. If a single tenant ultimately takes the whole building, it may have wanted a more customized truck court, and a multi-tenant layout can leave circulation feeling less private, but that is a modest price compared with a 462,000-square-foot structure that can only be offered to one kind of user and has to wait out that user's entire site-selection process.

Gastonia sits just west of Charlotte on Interstate 85, a route that connects the region to Southeastern distribution networks and gives a leasing team strong transportation and labor talking points. Davis, per the report, continues to expand its industrial platform in the Southeast, a market where population growth, transportation infrastructure and tenant demand underpin new investment.

Completion is still set for January 2027, and the report does not identify a user. The JV is taking leasing risk at a moment when the property is about to go to market, but it has reduced the downside by refusing to lock itself into one outcome. That flexible design will matter as the leasing market tests the project early next year.