Wildflowers aren’t the only thing sprouting up around Austin — warehouses are growing like weeds.
A shell company called MIC Texas Corporation filed to build two shell warehouses in northeast Austin. The project is planned for a 31-acre site at 12821 Titanium Street, not far from the Samsung semiconductor facility.
The estimated project cost is $32.6 million, although filings with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation are subject to change. Work is expected to begin in April and run through next March. All told, the warehouses will create 408,000 square feet of industrial space just off East Howard Lane.
The plans were filed by Susan McFarland of McFarland Architecture. Renderings of the project on McFarland’s website show two low, sprawling buildings surrounded by parking on all sides. The buildings share a loading bay between them, with 33 unloading docks along one building’s side. They have a plain gray trim with dark gray accents and two-story windows on the corners and along the outer walls.
Efforts to identify MIC Texas Corporation were unsuccessful. The LLC is registered to an escrow corporation in Newport Beach, California. The contact listed on the filing, Bill Messenger of Messenger Investment Company, did not respond to a call.
The Harris Branch area has drawn interest from large-scale builders in recent months. In November, Hines announced a partnership with the Galesi Group to build an industrial and logistics park on 150 acres at the corner of Harris Branch Parkway and Parmer Lane. Galesi told the Austin Business Journal that it owns 800 acres in the area and plans to build multifamily properties near the commercial project.
Read more
On top of the Samsung facility, the site is also near the Austin Executive Airport. For logistics uses, the facility is not far from State Highway 130, which connects straight to Interstate 10 between San Antonio and Houston.
Industrial properties in Austin had a banner year in 2022, with 4.2 million square feet of net absorption, according to a report from CBRE. Asking rents rose nearly 5 percent on the year as 11.6 million square feet of new space hit the market.