Cultivating development
Huge industrial park going on Ivey family farmland in East El Paso
Ben Ivey has mixed feelings about the huge industrial park to be built on farmland in East El Paso that’s been in his family for almost 90 years.
“I have an emotional tie to this land … I wanted to keep it (all) in farming,” Ivey, 76, said after a Wednesday groundbreaking ceremony for a 235-acre, multimillion-dollar industrial park to be located along Americas Avenue, or Highway Loop 375, and near Interstate 10 in East El Paso.
But the high-profile land, located inside El Paso city limits, is too valuable to remain totally as a farm, Ivey said. So, for years, his family has been trying to find the right redevelopment projects for the acreage.
A deal to put a Cinergy Entertainment Group movie/entertainment complex on some of the Ivey land next to Interstate 10 collapsed several years ago. That land is not part of the industrial park, which will take about half of the Ivey’s 500-acre site.
Ivey, Sansone families strike a chord
Ivey finally found the right fit with Sansone Group, the St. Louis, familyowned commercial development firm that agreed to lease 235 acres so the Ivey family could continue to own the land. No financial details were disclosed.
“I understood the pride that he had in his family and in this ground,” Nick Sansone told those gathered under a white tent on a windy, dusty afternoon for the groundbreaking ceremony.
“It’s the same pride” that Sansone said he and his three brothers have in operating their company started by their now-deceased father 66 years ago.
“And I knew … eventually we would get Ben trusting us. It took a minute, but we got there.”
The Rancho Del Rey Logistics Park is named after Ivey’s grandfather, King Benjamin Ivey, who bought the land in 1935 for a farm, and is “also a tribute to
our Lord, the king,” Ben Ivey said.
Many of the streets in the industrial park will be named after members of the large Ivey family. Ivey comes from a family of 14, including Rev. David Ivey, a Catholic priest and Fort Bliss chaplain, who blessed the project during the groundbreaking ceremony.
Prime site for warehousing, distribution
The family ties make the project special, Sansone said. But that’s not why his company and its partner, Raith Capital Partners, a New York commercial real estate firm active in the El Paso industrial real estate market, wanted Ivey’s land for the project.
“Location is everything in real estate, and I don’t know how you get a better location than this site,” with its “tremendous access, tremendous visibility and you’re right by the border” via the nearby YsletaZaragoza international bridge, Sansone said after the ceremony.
El Paso also is a prime location benefitting from nearshoring, Sansone said. That phenomenon has companies moving manufacturing plants from Asia and elsewhere to Mexico and other North American locations to be closer to customers.
That’s brought a boom in the construction of warehouse/distribution buildings in El Paso in the last several years to serve the booming manufacturing industry across the border in Juárez.
“This will be part of the great portfolio that we have” to attract new companies to this area, Jon Barela, chief executive officer of the Borderplex Alliance, the El Paso regional economic development group, said at the groundbreaking ceremony. Several county and city government officials also lauded the new project at the ceremony.
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This is Sansone’s first El Paso industrial project but likely not the last, he said.
German manufacturer Bosch first tenant
It will not be the biggest industrial development in Sansone’s extensive portfolio, but “in terms of tenant demand and interest, it’s number one. And I really think that’s due to the location of the site.,” he said.
Bosch, a giant German manufacturing company with factories in Juárez, already has leased 414,000 square feet of space inside what will be the first building in Rancho Del Rey.
The new location will almost double the space Bosch now has in a Socorro industrial building, which it will exit, and allow the company to support the sales growth in the automotive brakes and windshield wipers made at one of its two Juárez plants, said Patrick Dietz, Bosch director of trade warehouses. The new location will double its current El Paso workforce of about 40 people, he said.
Rancho Del Rey, to be built in three phases, will have several warehouse/distribution buildings with 3.7 million square feet of space, and is projected to be completed by the end of 2026. No construction costs were disclosed, but an industrial park of this size is a multimillion-dollar endeavor.
The first three-building phase will have 1.38 million square feet of space and is expected to be completed by the end of 2024.
Even though many new warehouse/distribution buildings have been built in the El Paso area in the last several years, Sansone said this area still has plenty of room for more industrial space.
The El Paso-area industrial space vacancy rate increased to 3.7% at the end of 2023 after hitting a record low of 0.6% at the end of 2022, CBRE Group, a global commercial real estate firm that tracks industrial markets, reported. However, much of the increase is tied to vacant spaces in two buildings, CBRE’s market report noted.
Some farming will remain
The new industrial park will significantly change Ivey’s land, but cotton and other crops will continue to be grown on the 500-acre site, he said.
It may not be profitable to continue growing crops on that land, “but farming is what we do,” Ivey said. The Ivey family, operating as Ivey Brothers Farms, has about 1,800 acres of El Paso County land still growing crops.