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From the The Business Journal
:http://www.bizjournals.com/triad/print-edition/2013/12/13/developersgo-vertical-to-meet-demands.html
SUBSCRIBER CONTENT: Dec 13, 2013, 6:00am EST Updated: Dec 13, 2013, 2:19pm EST
Developers go vertical to meet demands of
distributors
Katie Arcieri
Reporter- The Business Journal
Email | Twitter | Google+ | LinkedIn
Want to see the next frontier for manufacturing and distribution operations? Look up.
Location and access to major roads are, of course, the preeminent factors for industrial real estate,
but how high companies can stack and rack merchandise is increasingly a factor in where they go
and how facilities are built.
“It is certainly product-specific, but (users) of most new distribution facilities are looking at cubic
footage almost as importantly as square footage,” says Robin Team, president of Carolina
Investment Properties, one of the Triad’s most prolific developers.
For many distribution users, 30-foot ceiling heights are adequate, experts say. But Team says he’s
noticing the need for 40-foot ceiling clear heights — and higher — as distributors’ logistics
operations become more sophisticated. Two of the distribution facilities developed by Carolina
Investment Properties have clear heights of 38 feet and a peak height of more than 40 feet to
allow for needs such as high-bay racking systems. Those facilities are the Ralph Lauren building at
201/101 N. Pendleton St. in High Point, which was recently expanded from 365,000 square feet to
800,000 square feet, and an approximately 350,000-square-foot distribution building, also in High
Point for Legacy Classic Furniture.
Those multi-level racking systems, along with an increased popularity of sophisticated pick module
equipment needed for material handling, are a large part of what is driving the need for higher
ceilings.
“They are saying we’ve got X amount of acres so we can’t spread out; we’ve got to go up,” says
Charles Edwards, executive director of the N.C. Center for Global Logistics, which provides logistics
consultant services. “How high can you go, be safe and be efficient but maximize the square
footage?”
Perhaps nowhere is that need more apparent than in High Point, where a three-story racking
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Developers go vertical to meet demands of distributors - Greensboro - T...
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system was installed into Ralph Lauren’s expanded Pendleton Street facility.
David King, president of Thomasville-based Warehouse Design, which provided the system for
Ralph Lauren, says it allows groups of employees to stand on each floor and pick out orders of one
or two items as opposed to fully loaded pallets of product.
“They actually go and pull those orders and put them on a conveyor and get it out the door,” King
says.
Higher ceiling heights also can make manufacturing more efficient. In Winston-Salem, contractor
CRB Builders is renovating the former Dell facility into a $100 million manufacturing and
distribution center for Herbalife Ltd. that allows the company to build three floors high.
“We’re actually putting columns and foundations in, and we’re going to build up,” says Mike Locke,
general manager of the Winston-Salem Herbalife plant. “You need that height to go from the start
of the (manufacturing) processes to the bottom of the process inside. We’re actually building a
building inside the building.”
Katie Arcieri covers manufacturing, transportation/logistics, aviation, textiles, tobacco
and furniture. Contact her at (336) 370-2913.
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