Cushman & Wakefield Named Agent for Sonoma County Industrial Development

Commercial real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield has been named leasing agent for a new, 260,000-square-foot industrial development in Sonoma County. Located on the Sonoma city line, the $32 million ground-up project is a joint venture of Washington Capital Management and VSP LLC.

A summer construction start is planned for the 20-acre property, which sits at the corner of 8th Street East and Highway 12. Cushman & Wakefield industrial specialists Steven Leonard, Brian Foster and Nils VonDoepp are heading the leasing assignment out of the firm's Larkspur, Calif., office.

"The vacancy rate for Class A warehouse/distribution product in the City of Sonoma and in surrounding unincorporated areas is essentially zero," Leonard said. "With strong local demand, especially from tenants in the wine and wine-related products businesses, we are already seeing significant interest in this new opportunity. The property is well positioned to achieve 100 percent lease-up well before its delivery in early 2017."

Leonard noted that a lack of industrial space in Sonoma County continues to drive vacancies down and pricing up. "We have seen a 20 to 25 percent jump in rental rates over the past 18 months," he said. "Fundamentals are justifying new construction, and within that context the Washington Capital/VSP project reflects the development community's confidence in this marketplace. In turn, the addition of modern, Class A product will fill a real need here."

Cushman & Wakefield's industrial brokerage platform provides global resources and local expertise for tenant and landlord representation, disposition and acquisition services, transaction management, and industrial consulting including labor and demographic analysis. In 2014 globally, this group completed more than 8,200 industrial lease and sale transactions, including Capital Markets transactions, totaling nearly 337 million square feet with an aggregate value in excess of $16.8 billion.