The recently formed Houston-based Lovett Industrial has completed its first three warehouses, and two of them are for Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN).
The online retail giant occupies a nearly 1.08 million-square-foot building in Missouri City’s Fort Bend Business Park, which was completed in September, and a 220,000-square-foot facility at the 99 North Logistics Park in Spring, open since August, according to Lovett Industrial.
Lovett's third Houston-area facility, Nova Logistics Park inside the Sugar Land Business Park, is a 326,000-square-foot cross-docking warehouse, which was redeveloped from a former warehouse owned by NOV Inc. (NYSE: NOV), previously known as National Oilwell Varco.
Nova Logistics Park is 50% leased to Boise Cascade Building Materials Distribution, Lovett Industrial said.
Jim Foreman and Allison Bergmann of Cushman & Wakefield are handling marketing for Nova Logistics Park and Fort Bend Business Park. 99 North Logistics Park is listed by Jarret Venghaus, David Buescher and David Holland of JLL.
Houston-based Alston Construction Co. built the Amazon facility in Missouri City, while Dallas-based ML Gray built the one in Spring. Houston-based Arch-Con Corp. constructed the warehouse in Sugar Land, according to Lovett Industrial President Charlie Meyer.
Meyer founded the firm in February 2020 together with Frank Liu, owner of the Houston-based Lovett Group, which includes Lovett Commercial, Lovett Homes and Lovett InTown Homes.
Meyer said delivering the company’s first products feels great.
“It’s been a lot of work, but it is very rewarding,” he said. “We’ve assembled a great team, and we’re continuing to grow that team so that we can grow our business in more and more markets across the country.”
Lovett Industrial, which is separate from but affiliated with the Lovett Group, is currently active in six U.S. markets with 5.7 million square feet of warehouses completed or under construction.
The completion of the three Houston-area warehouses comes as the industrial real estate market is benefiting from increased online retail and supply chain shortages that have led companies to stock up on products in warehouses.
The third quarter of 2021 marked the second consecutive quarter in more than three years that demand for industrial space outpaced supply in Greater Houston and the fourth straight quarter of more than 9 million square feet of leasing activity, according to NAI Partners.
However, one of its first potential tenants Lovett Industrial lost due to the pandemic was in the oil and gas sector, Meyer said.
“It was demoralizing,” he said. “But we fairly quickly realized that this was actually going to make the business that we’re in much more dynamic and that it was going to require tenants to become more active, especially in secondary markets where they may not have as significant of a presence. And so, a market like Houston has been a major beneficiary of that.”
Lovett Industrial is developing another local business park, Fairway North Logistics Park on Ranking Road near the Hardy Toll Road. The first building is slated to be complete in the next two months, Meyer said.