Mericle projects anticipate demand

JENKINS TWP. – Home sales may be facing a headwind, but demand for the right kind of commercial property is promising enough in Northeastern Pennsylvania that Mericle Commercial Real Estate Services is building three speculative flex buildings in CenterPoint Commerce and Trade Park East.

The 98,000-, 92,400- and 44,800-square-foot buildings have been designed to accommodate manufacturing, warehousing or office tenants.

While the buildings are being built on spec, they are aimed at satisfying demand Mericle has identified in the past and feels now in the calls it gets from companies and site selectors. The last batch of specs Mericle built included an 84,000-square-foot flex building that is now 80 percent complete.

“We must have five or six companies of different types showing very strong interest in that building,” said Jim Cummings, vice president of marketing. “If we don’t put up more buildings of that type, we’ll have demand and no supply in that park.”

CenterPoint has landed The Men’s Wearhouse, FedEx and the first United States operations for British fashion retailer Boden, among others, and continues to draw a high level of interest, Cummings said. Location is a key, and not just for access to highways that connect the park to major East Coast cities.

The location advantages include 10-year tax abatements and foreign trade zone status.

Mericle markets its properties in a variety of ways and places, with an emphasis on the Lehigh Valley, the Philadelphia region and northern New Jersey. Brochures, e-mails and phone calls go out from Mericle’s Plains Township office to companies, brokers and site selection specialists.

That is supplemented by keeping economic development organizations informed of availability, setting up at trade shows and taking every opportunity to drive interest to the company’s Web site.

“Once you’re there, there’s information about all of our properties,” Cummings said.

He said national clients compare properties over a much wider area than Northeastern Pennsylvania, looking “up and down the I-81 corridor” as far as the Maryland border.

Site work has been substantially completed on the new parcels and the buildings, which can be subdivided to accommodate smaller tenants and will be ready for tenants in September.