53-Acre Sale Jump-Starts Plan Near Ship Channel

PASADENA, TX-Buzzi Unicem USA Inc. has shed 53 acres to a limited liability company from Houston that’s planning to rework the dirt into a new industrial park for the near east submarket. The land work will take six weeks to complete.

Euro-1 LLC has acquired 601 N. South St., which boasts 2,200 feet of frontage along the main thoroughfare and bordered by chemical facilities of Wilmington, DE-based Dupont Chemical Co. and local firm, Ethyl Corp. Doyle Toups, senior vice president for Grubb & Ellis in Houston, says dirt work will start in one week for South Street Industrial Park, with marketing poised to kick in any day. He tells GlobeSt.com that the new owner plans to drain a 46-acre pond and backfill the cavity with “select material” to create 53 acres of developable industrial land within a half-mile of the Houston Ship Channel.

Toups says the land will be tagged at $3.50 per sf, with the goal to flip it to a single user although the door is still open for some spec space. Based on 45% coverage, the site could hold about one million sf.

“This is an unusual piece of real estate,” Toups says. “It’s a great location for an industrial park.” He adds that the highest and best use would be warehouses and distribution centers or a manufacturing plant, but it also could end up as a container yard.

Toups and Terrell Miller, a Grubb & Ellis associate, have been marketing the surplus real estate of Lone Star Industries Inc. since its merger in 2004 with Bethlehem, PA-based Buzzi Unicem. The land once held Lone Star’s cement factory, which was shuttered in the 1990s, razed and remediation completed. “There are no environmental problems, which is why the ownership can drain the pond,” Toups says.