Triovest is constructing and marketing two industrial buildings along Ironside Drive in Brampton. (Courtesy Triovest)

Triovest has just started marketing a 22-acre Brampton site in the northern Greater Toronto Area where it plans to build two mid-bay industrial buildings totalling about 562,000 square feet.

The property is owned by a pension fund, but Triovest will be doing much of the legwork and heavy lifting to get the almost identically sized buildings at 20 and 30 Ironside Dr. to market.

“We’re a third-party property management, leasing and asset management group so we’re managing this on behalf of our client and our construction team will be doing the development of the property,” Triovest senior vice-president of leasing and sales representative Tracy Macdonald told RENX.

“We’ll do all of the entitlements, the demolition of the existing buildings that are there and the construction.”

What Ironside Drive development will offer

The development will offer flexible size configurations ranging from 68,926 to 282,266 square feet.

Two per cent of 20 Ironside Dr. will be office space, with the rest dedicated to warehouse space. It will include 36-foot clear ceiling heights, 40 8×10-foot truck-level doors, one 12×14-foot drive-in door and 154 parking stalls.

All of those numbers will be the same for 30 Ironside Dr., except the latter will have 218 parking stalls.

A LEED C&S certification is being targeted upon completion.

Environmental measures being taken will include light pollution reduction, six electric vehicle charging stations, water-efficient landscaping, sensored LED lighting, low-emitting finishing materials and post-consumer recycled content.

The goal is to have site-plan approvals from the City of Brampton before the end of 2021, demolition of the existing buildings beginning in March and construction starting in April or May. The buildings should be substantially ready for occupancy by June or July 2023.

Macdonald said the site is occupied by both industrial- and retail-oriented tenants who have been given notice to vacate and the new best-in-class industrial buildings will make much better use of the land.

The property is located just north of Bovaird Drive West and within 3.5 kilometres of Highway 410. Four other 400 series highways are within 30 kilometres, while the Queen Elizabeth Way is 32.4 kilometres away.

Brampton Transit Züm bus stops on two different routes are located very close to the site.

Brampton’s 611,000 people make it Canada’s ninth-largest city, and it’s also the second-fastest-growing major city in the country, so the Ironside Drive development will have access to a large workforce.

Industrial leasing plans

Macdonald said there’s been early interest from both brokers and end-users for the site. She expects companies involved with importing, exporting and distribution to be the most likely tenants, but Triovest is in no rush to sign a lease.

“You don’t want to be inking a deal today and then find out that you’re leaving two bucks on the table a year from now,” said Macdonald.

“I’m not sure we would paper anything immediately unless it was for a full user.

“We’ll probably take a little pause given what’s happening in the market with the increase in rental rates that we’re seeing quarter-over-quarter.”

Panattoni is building a 1.3-million-square-foot distribution centre for Canadian Tire and Pure Industrial is developing a 625,000-square-foot industrial facility on a 28-acre site in Brampton.

“I don’t think this is going to compete with those types of distribution centres,” said Macdonald. “This is a little bit smaller and we’ve positioned it so the size can be demised down.”

Once the building shells are constructed, it won’t be too difficult to divide them into smaller units if that’s what leasing demand dictates.

“We’ll probably bring a couple of services into each building just to have that flexibility,” said Macdonald. “There’s quite a bit of demand out there and a lack of supply.”