

FAIRFIELD – Becknell Industrial will soon start construction on a 176,800-square-foot industrial building on Commerce Center Drive.
Located off Seward Road, the planned 260-by-680-foot, pre-cast concrete building will sit on a 14.1-acre site and should be completed by March or April, said Jeremy Kraus, first vice president for CBRE, a commercial real estate firm assisting Becknell.
“Becknell is excited to further expand our presence in the Cincinnati market and to continue to build upon the success that we’ve experienced at our Port Union development project,” said Katrina Cupp, Becknell’s assistant vice president for investments.
While there are no signed contracts yet, Kraus said his company is actively marketing to a number of clients.
“That building could accommodate one good-sized user or it could be subdivided for two or three or four users,” said Greg Kathman, Fairfield’s director of development services.
“This building will fit in our industrial area – most of the city east of (Ohio) Route 4 is zoned industrial. It makes a nice addition to what is already a strong industrial area.”
The site for the $10 million project was selected for a number of reasons, Kraus said:
“We have a good site plan. We should be pushing forward in the very near future,” Kraus said. “This property lets us do some things that would be harder to do on smaller sites – such as trailer parking.”
- Proximity to I-75, I-74, I-71, I-275 and I-471
- Located within 600 miles of more than 60 percent of United States’ manufacturing
- About 1.7 million potential employees live within a 30-mile radius
“We have a good site plan. We should be pushing forward in the very near future,” Kraus said. “This property lets us do some things that would be harder to do on smaller sites – such as trailer parking.”
Planned for the manufacturing and distribution facility are 18-21 docks, two drive-in doors, a truck court and trailer parking, 136 parking spaces for cars, and motion sensor LED lighting.
The facility would be owned and managed by Becknell, which currently owns 151 industrial properties in 32 states. Those properties total about 19 million square feet of space valued at $1.3 billion, of which 93.4 percent is leased.