By Mitchell Parton  –  Reporter, San Antonio Business Journal

A huge industrial project is underway northeast of San Antonio near Interstate 35, which could be of interest to growing e-commerce companies or auto part suppliers wanting to take advantage of Tesla’s growing manufacturing presence in Austin.

Titan Development and Robinson Weeks Partners in a joint venture have broken ground on their first speculative building in the Selma portion of Titan Industrial Park, which extends into Schertz.

The 305,760-square-foot building is expected to be complete by July 2022.

Titan and Robinson Weeks have also proposed two additional buildings at the Selma site, one to have 428,524 square feet, and another with 343,615 square feet along Lookout Road.

The 184-acre Selma portion of the Titan Industrial Park will eventually total 2.5 million square feet of industrial space. Titan Development bought the land in 2014 and has since sold portions of land to food and beverage distributor Ben E. Keith and O’Reilly Auto Parts.

Joe Iannacone, senior vice president for Titan Development, said the building was designed with distribution in mind, and that it could accommodate multiple tenants. John Colglazier of NAI Partners is the leasing agent for the property.

“With the great access to I-35 as well as Loop 1604, it sits up really well for distribution users,” Iannacone said.

Iannacone declined to provide the total cost of development.

MW Builders’ Pflugerville office is the design builder, George Butler Associates Inc. near St. Louis is the architect, and Pacheco Koch’s Austin office is the civil engineer.

This is one of many industrial projects Titan and Robinson Weeks have worked together on in the San Antonio region.

The partnership has built six industrial properties in the Schertz portion of the industrial park, which includes 312 acres to the north and 124 acres to the east. The Schertz park will include about 4 million square feet once completely built out.

Titan and Robinson Weeks are also building a 175,000-square-foot seventh speculative warehouse and distribution facility on the Schertz site, which will also wrap up construction in second quarter 2022.

Titan Development, a development and real estate investment firm founded in 1999, has offices in Albuquerque and Austin. The firm manages more than $375 million in assets.

Robinson Weeks, headquartered in Atlanta, has developed or acquired more than 100 million square feet of industrial property across the U.S., totaling $5 billion in value.

The San Antonio industrial market has grown 16% to 131.4 million square feet over the last five years, with Northeast San Antonio being the largest submarket, according to brokerage NAI Partners. The bulk of the market’s industrial footprint is warehouse and distribution space, followed by manufacturing.

“It continues to be very active in a broad range of groups,” Iannacone said.

Iannacone said the local market has seen big e-commerce users continue to take up as much space as they can, as well as auto manufacturers looking to tap into Tesla in Austin and Toyota in South San Antonio. He added that more H-E-B suppliers are looking for space as the grocer plans a new fulfillment center in nearby Cibolo.