Green said that precasting walls is more expensive but it can make sense for smaller properties. He said that a minimum of 60,000 square feet is needed to make tilt-wall construction worth the investment.
“A lot of people think these are big-box easy things to do,” Green said. “It takes a lot. These developers are smart. There are a lot of studies that go into it. At Frampton, we’re proud to align ourselves with people like this. It’s truly how our company has grown so successfully.”
Baxter said that the first tenant at Eastport Commerce Center is a national company that provides value-add distribution space where parts and pieces are assembled and distributed to local businesses. But if the space sells out quickly or a company enters and wants to expand, the engineering has been done to accommodate that already.
“There’s knockout panels on the end wall,” Baxter said, walking through Eastport’s open industrial space. “If somebody was on the end, they could come in and get set up and then they could just come in and cut those out, and they could expand.”
Baxter said that building suppliers, parts suppliers and secondary suppliers for regional manufacturers are well-suited to the burgeoning Class A industrial market.
“That’s probably going to be a niche regional or local kind of spot for big national or international companies,” Baxter said.
Baxter said the industrial market narrows as companies get closer to Charleston, and even Palmetto Commerce Park in North Charleston has a lot of property that has been built-out or is spoken for.
He said locating between Summerville, Orangeburg and Columbia makes sense because companies can have easy port access and trucks can enter and exit the highway system.
Also, the larger tracts of less-expensive land allow for the requirements of industrial facilities, which are different from mixed-use, residential, and office and retail.
Green said the Interstate 26 corridor from Charleston to Columbia is booming, and developers are reacting to that growth. He said it’s an exciting time to be in construction in the region.
“It’s just an economic powerhouse when you put all of this together,” Green said. “Everyone’s worried about a recession, but as Frampton goes and the developers we align ourselves with, they’re not slowing down.”
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