The public got greater insight into a developing, large-scale North East-area construction project this week as details were revealed through loan paperwork.
Codenamed “Project Iron LLC” by the county, the future tenant of Principio Commerce Center I has been approved by the Maryland Department of Commerce for a $1.2 million conditional Maryland Economic Development Assistance and Authority Fund loan to occupy a nearly 1.15 million-square-foot warehouse in Principio Business Park.
No such limited liability company currently exists in state records and county officials said they were still bound by a non-disclosure agreement until a future formal announcement of the tenant by the state.
Announced in May by Trammell Crow Co., a Dallas-based commercial real estate developer and investor and independently operated subsidiary of CBRE, in a partnership with Diamond Realty Investments, the real estate investment arm of Mitsubishi Corp., the distribution center project is expected to be completed by April, said Christopher Moyer, county director of economic development.
“The loan is for the location and setup of the future tenant, who we expect to be able to name soon,” Moyer said. “The loan is not for the speculative construction of Principio Commerce Center I.”
The tenant will invest $90 million to improve the site to specifications and will enter into a 10-year lease with Principio Business Park upon completion, according to a county resolution on the loan. They expect to hire 700 permanent full-time employees at the distribution center by the end of 2020.
Mark Chubb, a Colliers International real estate agent, told the Whig in September that the warehouse was attracting prospects in e-commerce, retail and consumer products.
The expansive facility will feature a cross-dock design with up to 181 loading docks. An additional 15 acres of developable land could also accommodate an additional 300,000 square-feet of space in the future.
A MEDAAF loan requires a 10 percent county match, in this case $120,000, which county officials reported Tuesday would be paid out of the county’s Business Incentive Fund that draws from video terminal lottery (slots) revenue from Hollywood Casino Perryville.
The county’s portion of the loan will contain employment benchmarks for any tenants of the facility as a condition of its approval, officials reported. Those benchmarks and any other terms will be negotiated by County Executive Alan McCarthy’s administration.
Moyer, who was tapped by McCarthy to take over the county’s Office of Economic Development in December, explained that the Principio Commerce Center I project was a major undertaking from its private investors, but had clearly drawn considerable interest due to its favorable location near interstate highways.
“At more than a million square-feet, this is a large facility no matter where you are,” said Moyer, who previously served as the director of business development at the Baltimore Development Corporation, a nonprofit that works with Baltimore City on economic development. “A building that size isn’t built to be divided to ten 100,000 square-foot spaces.”
The Principio Commerce Park I project is the second large-scale project underway at the 1,000-acre, Stewart Companies-owned Principio Business Park, which is already home to Restoration Hardware and General Electric — each of which have warehouses of more than a million square-feet. Construction of German global discount grocery chain Lidl’s northern regional headquarters hub is at a much more visible site along Route 40 near Belvidere Road.
Lidl officials said they will be hiring employees to fill 120 full-time jobs, including managers, administration staff and logistics warehouse staff. That project also benefited from $360,000 in state business incentives to Lidl and Cecil County was required to offer 10 percent of that amount, or $36,000, as a match. The county’s $20,000 for job training and $16,000 in a three-year conditional loan also came from the Business Incentive Fund.
Both projects are expected to bring a generous economic impact with a potential of job creation, income tax and property tax revenues for the county — and there is more on the horizon.
Cecil County Department of Permits and Inspections Director Pat Conway confirmed Tuesday that work is beginning this month on a 150,000-square-foot site near Principio Technology Park that will house a distribution center for TRUaire, a leading manufacturer of grilles, registers and diffusers for the residential and commercial HVAC market.
TRUaire opened a 110,000-square-foot distribution center in nearby Aberdeen, its fourth overall and first in the northeastern United States, in August 2012.
Stewart Properties applied for the building permit on that North East-area project last month.
All three of these projects have benefitted from the county’s “fast-track” process, which it started more than a decade ago to help job-creating companies cut through approvals faster than normal.
Any project that is expected to create at least 30 new jobs and occupy at least 30,000 square-feet of new construction qualifies for the favorable processing, although, the county is somewhat flexible with the requirements for consideration.
Since its implementation, at least 20 projects in Cecil County have been fast-tracked, including IKEA, Warwick Mushroom and Restoration Hardware.
