LONGVIEW — Acres of vacant Kelso land near the Longview Wye are being put to use after decades, with the goal of completing an industrial warehouse roughly the size of 17 football fields by next year.
Real Estate Developer Trammell Crow Company, headquartered in Dallas, with funding from Diamond Realty Investments, headquartered in Los Angeles, is building the 1.18 million-square-foot warehouse at 2700 Talley Way, across the highway from RV Country, near Interstate 5’s exit 36.
The warehouse is being built on an 82-acre plot of land, southwest of the intersection of Interstate 5 and state Route 432, which was owned by the Segale family for decades.
The area had been slated to hold a retail complex, including a rumored Costco, in the early 2010s but no construction ever took place.
The Kelso City Council voted in May 2022 to rezone the property in order for the proposed warehouse to be built.
County auditor records show the property is owned by a foreign limited liability company called DRI/TCC MID I-5, LLC with its principal office in Dallas.
A Trammell Crow Company spokesperson said the facility is being built without a specific tenant in mind in which to lease the space.
The spokesperson said space could hold one tenant or be sub-divided across multiple businesses.
The spokesperson said brokers with CBRE Portland and CBRE Seattle are marketing the site to lease as it’s being built.
The company reports the finalized industrial warehouse will be one story and include 40-foot-tall indoor storage space, 514 vehicle parking spaces, 219 potential unloading docks and room for additional expansion.
Kirk Olsen, in charge of industrial project development at Trammell Crow Company’s Portland office, states in the press release the location benefits from the Portland labor pool, and there is a continued demand for these types of properties for warehousing and logistics in the Pacific Northwest.
Steve Horenstein, a land-use lawyer representing Trammell Crow at a 2022 Kelso City Council meeting, said, at the time, there was more demand for large industrial projects in Cowlitz County than retail complexes.
“Industrial development is moving north because we’re out of land in Clark County for this kind of development,” Horenstein said.
