Trammell Crow doubles down on Hillsboro industrial spec

Trammell Crow Company's second phase of Sewell Corporate Park in Hillsboro, Oregon, is underway less than a year after the first delivered, even as three buildings from Phase I continue to be marketed for sale or lease. The new phase adds two speculative buildings totaling 294,700 square feet on 17.76 acres about 20 miles west of Portland.

Phase I delivered 396,212 square feet, and Clayton Madey of Macadam Forbes is still marketing three remaining buildings for sale or lease. MDG Architecture designed the new phase, Perlo Construction is building it, and Trammell Crow separately has VanRose Technology Center, a 303,969-square-foot logistics building, underway.

Steve Sieber, a principal with TCC in Portland, called the company “the most active developer in Hillsboro and in the Sunset Corridor,” and he described the project as aimed at “west side high tech businesses and the companies that serve them.”

Two weeks earlier, the same speculative playbook showed up in Fort Bend County, Texas, where Trammell Crow and Daiwa House broke ground on an industrial second phase that, as this publication has reported, pushed that venture past 2 million square feet. A firm that breaks ground on two second phases in different corridors within two weeks has decided that waiting for pre-leases is a bigger risk than building ahead of demand.

Hillsboro is the sharper version of that bet, because Phase II is going vertical while the three Phase I buildings still being marketed have to find buyers or tenants, so the Sunset Corridor’s high-tech demand must absorb old supply and new supply at the same time. Until those marketing assignments turn into contracts, this groundbreak is a statement of confidence, not a market result.