Long Island Construction Law does not own this content. This content was created by David Winzelberg and was published to the Long Island Business Law on March 4th, 2022. To view the full article, please click here. 

The biggest construction boom in a generation aims to add millions of square feet of warehouse and distribution facilities on Long Island. National and regional firms are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in new ground-up development and redevelopment projects here to try and meet the skyrocketing demand for industrial space.

Industry experts estimate there could be an additional 10 million square feet of new industrial buildings coming to market in Nassau and Suffolk counties within just the next couple of years.

While the bulk of Long Island’s existing stock of industrial real estate was built in the 1970s and 1980s, much of it was tailored towards light manufacturing with ceiling heights of 18 feet and lower. But the vast majority of today’s industrial tenants are looking for warehouse and distribution buildings, which require much higher ceilings to accommodate storage-rack systems that facilitate the constant in-and-out movement of products.

And though there has been a smattering of new industrial construction here over the past decade, it pales in comparison to the current building boom.

“When COVID hit, everything exploded. People didn’t go to the store, they ordered everything online,” says broker Phil Heilpern, an industrial specialist with CBRE. “On Long Island, we’ve seen unprecedented interest from national developers who have been buying land for $1 million, $2 million, $3 million and more an acre. They’re even buying office buildings at the $3 million-an-acre price to knock them down and building 100,000, 200,000, 300,000 square feet. Out east, they’re planning 700,000, 800,000, 1 million square feet of industrial buildings and parks to capture the current demand and expected future demand from e-commerce.”

Heilpern recently brokered the lease of the new 246,500-square-foot warehouse and distribution building at 90 Ruland Road in Melville to Amazon. The new building is the first of two such facilities developed by New Jersey-based Hartz Mountain Industries at the 48.5-acre site formerly occupied by Newsday.

Amazon, which continues to gobble up industrial space here, will also soon be occupying a newly built 204,000-square-foot warehouse and distribution facility on the former Cerro Wire site in Syosset.

Heilpern said the second building at the Melville site, a 600,000-square-foot warehouse at 235 Pinelawn Road that’s expected to be completed shortly, has attracted a lot of interest from prospective tenants in the e-commerce and brick-and-mortar retail sectors.

The building at 90 Ruland Road has 47 loading docks and two drive-in bays, while the building at 235 Pinelawn Road has 120 loading docks and two drive-in bays. Both buildings have plenty of truck parking and feature 40-foot-high ceilings and 56-foot column spacing, two important features for modern warehouses that earn them the industry nickname “high cubes.”

Long Island Construction Law does not own this content. This content was created by David Winzelberg and was published to the Long Island Business Law on March 4th, 2022. To view the full article, please click here. 

John Caravella, Esq. is a construction attorney and formerly practicing project architect at The Law Office of John Caravella, P.C., representing architects, engineers, contractors, subcontractors, and owners in all phases of contract preparation, litigation, and arbitration across New York and Florida. He also serves as an arbitrator to the American Arbitration Association Construction Industry Panel. Mr. Caravella can be reached by email at John@LIConstructionLaw.com or by telephone at (516) 462-7051.

David Winzelberg covers real estate, development, land use, retailing, franchising and white-collar crime for Long Island Business News.

An award-winning journalist who spent 20 years writing about Long Island for The New York Times, David’s work has also appeared in The Atlantic magazine, Forbes.com and has been featured on CNBC’s “American Greed.” A former adjunct professor of journalism and former editor of a weekly community newspaper, David is a frequent panelist and moderator at area business events.

He can reached via email at dwinzelberg@libn.com or at (631) 913-4247.

Follow him on Twitter @DavidWinzelberg.

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