NorthPoint JV breaks ground on the first 12 percent of a $750 million industrial plan

In Haslet, about 25 miles north of Fort Worth, the first piece of Intermodal Logistics Center West has broken ground: a 1 million-square-foot cross-dock warehouse with no disclosed tenant, backed by NorthPoint Development, Olympus Ventures and an unnamed local family. The venture's structure — two development sponsors alongside a local family — suggests land contributed at the entity level, though no terms were given.

This first building accounts for roughly 12 percent of the 8.4 million square feet planned across nine buildings on 1,000 acres, a $750 million program that pencils out to about $89 a square foot all-in, land and site work included. A developer carries that number only if the program can be financed in pieces.

Building 1 carries the current cycle's standard equipment: cross-dock layout, 40-foot clear heights, 100 dock doors, four oversized ramp doors and parking for 750 cars and 194 trailers, with trailer capacity expandable to 404. Crossland Construction is building it, CBRE holds the leasing assignment, and BNSF will provide intermodal connectivity.

Most of that specification is table stakes. Clear heights and door counts scale with the footprint, and every big-box project between Fort Worth and Dallas offers the same package. The scarce inputs at Haslet are rail service and trailer storage. BNSF intermodal connectivity is the one thing a competing developer cannot put on a construction schedule, and the 194 trailer stalls at delivery, with room to double, are the numbers that will carry the rent.

The decision the partnership did not make is the one worth watching: nothing in the announcement commits the joint venture to nine buildings on a construction calendar. Starting with one million square feet keeps the remaining capital behind lease signings instead of behind a crane schedule, the disciplined version of a $750 million program — slower to build but a smaller bet on the leasing market.

No preleasing was disclosed, so the first building is going up against the market rather than against a signed tenant. Texas industrial joint ventures have been willing to make that trade; Trammell Crow and Daiwa House broke ground on a speculative second phase in Fort Bend County in August, with owner-occupant sales from the first phase behind them and that venture now past 2 million square feet. Haslet is the larger program and the earlier one in its leasing life.

Nine buildings is a decade of work, and the pace will be set on CBRE's leasing desk rather than Crossland's construction schedule.